


How Devil May Cry 5 Could Have Been Written Better

by Restless_Ghost_95



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Angst, Au of sorts, Catharsis, Fix-It of Sorts, Game Review, Gen, I Tried, I Was Drunk When I Wrote This, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I also ramble about horror movies, I just want something better man, Story within a Story, in chap4 I kinda write some bits of fanfic but not a whole lot, in chapter 4, this is more of a review and rant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2020-06-24 12:34:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19723780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Restless_Ghost_95/pseuds/Restless_Ghost_95
Summary: There will be some fan-fiction in chapter 4, but this work is mainly a catharsis review/rant of sorts I wrote because I absolutely HATED Devil May Cry 5's story, as a former fan of the DMC series who was initially very excited for DMC5 before the dreaded March spoiler- & as a disappointed fan of horror fiction and a fan of RE7. ...Table of Contents are in my prologue chapter.





	1. Intro/Prologue

Contents

1\. Intro/Prologue (you are here)  


2\. DMC5’s wasted narrative potential

3\. Visions of V manga, even more wasted narrative potential 

4\. How I Would Actually Improve DMC5’s Story (parts of this veer into quasi-fanfiction structure-wise. Other parts are commentary & complaining)

5\. I write about 2 recent horror films, bear with me, it will make sense. 

6\. Relevant links

7\. Conclusion


	2. Devil May Cry 5’s wasted narrative potential

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my catharsis.

** Devil May Cry 5’s wasted narrative potential **

“ _I have planted a false oath in the earth; it has brought forth a poison tree_.” --William Blake (The Four Zoas, Night II)

This is the most I have written about a video game in my short life, which is unfortunate because this is not happy writing at all, nor is it “politically correct” or whatever. All of my uncontrollable excitement for this game fell out the window and died after I learned how the story unfolded.

I never read any of the pre-DMC3 manga books so I have no clue what happens in those.

But I DID read the *summary* of the DMC5 prequel book “Before the Nightmare” that the DMCInfo people from Twitter were nice enough to translate and post publicly. I’ll mention that book later on in this chapter.

OK, I’ll get this rant over with, because the story of this game made me feel like the equivalent of Gordon Ramsey getting food poisoning for a mediocre-tasting meal that was obscenely late.

The game-play exceeded my expectations but the narrative certainly didn’t.

I obviously have zero problems with DMC5’s game-play, level design, music, monster design, etc.— only the story. Thing is, I had a lot of confidence in the very likely (and then proven) possibility that the former aspects of this video game would be outstanding (with the exception of Dante’s fight theme song, but oh well). Indeed, it was the story that I had focused on, since I did not need to worry about the rest of the game being sub-par. …But the story? God, what a shame.

...I love almost any kind of horror fiction, so I was bouncing off the walls cheering when it looked like DMC5’s story was going to have a horror bent, especially with all of that amazing creepy imagery. I knew the development teams with this and Resident Evil 7 were different, but I had high hopes either way because I definitely enjoyed every part of RE7 (I played through it and the epilogue stories 3 times).

I would’ve also been happy if DMC5 was more like DMC1, if Urizen was an ancient demon from a time before Mundus. That would’ve been fantastic. Even the little game booklet for DMC1 states (in the info about the spider demon Phantom) that there is much worse in Hell. …And Dante’s personality in DMC1 is actually my favorite version of Dante, because he has a decent balance of “serious and wise guy” at his age (29 in that game, I think).

I was hoping that V would quote a story like The Colour out of Space or The King in Yellow.

V himself reminds me of Ray Bradbury’s “Illustrated Man” (even though the stories in that collection were actually all sci-fi) with the face of Keanu Reeves or Adam Driver.

Or perhaps there would be references to movies like The Fly (Cronenberg version) or John Carpenter’s The Thing (body horror, monster imagery & attacks), Prince of Darkness (incredibly powerful demons), or In The Mouth of Madness. I actually re-watched those movies 2 weeks ago.

There was amazing potential for some “In the Mouth of Madness” references with V’s book being a spell book or some cool thing, or some of William Blake’s poetry (The Book of Urizen poem, obviously) being a catalyst for a demon’s power. Something like that. …For instance, can you imagine a character doing some cool shit like reading from that poem as a spell to seal Urizen’s power away or to kill him? That would have been interesting in relation to the DMC character Urizen and the poem itself.

...sadly my excitement was all for nothing.

Because it was just another lame cliché-filled sibling rivalry story that felt like a bad joke. What an awful letdown.

There were regrettably no quotes from The Book of Urizen poem, even though the main demon is named so, because he was a boring red herring cop-out the entire time.

I don't think we even got an Edgar Allan Poe reference.

The closest “classic horror” reference is that Vergil Clive Barkered himself with a demonic tree like a scene from one of the Hellraiser movies.

And the Gilgamesh boss Nero fights in mission 6 resembles “the impossibly tall creature” or the Behemoth in The Mist by Stephen King.

**https://samurai-gamers.com/devil-may-cry-5/gilgamesh-boss-guide/**

**http://monstersvault.com/movie_monster/the-mist-behemoth/**

**https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-mists-true-horror-exists-only-in-bernie-wrightsons-5030140**

As far as I’m concerned, Bradbury, Barker, and Carpenter are too sophisticated for the hacks at Crapcom to use as good inspiration. Even some of the Blake quotes in the game feel as if the script writers just skimmed some short poems of his and tacked on whatever sounded edgy enough.

I am sincerely aghast at the waste of potential for what COULD have been an amazing story, something I had dearly hoped for from July 2018 to March.

Devil May Cry 5’s story was just so small-minded and contrary. It could have been amazing like the trailers ( ** _never_** **trust those** ) made it seem— but it was badly held back by lazy boring writers banking on the nostalgia of DMC3, so they shamelessly tried replicating the basic narrative of that so it was uninspired crap instead.

The series’ story is now stagnant & it just does not move forward with 5.

Despite DMC4 having a boring story with a few good scenes & dialogue, it still moved the series forward as a whole.

Through my pessimistic lens, I see Devil May Cry 5 as a story that unintentionally shows that biological family ain’t shit, & you shouldn’t try and help terrible relatives that don’t care about you. Because just look where it got Nero. Look where it got a city full of innocent people.

Giving someone like him a second chance after all the crimes he did is like giving someone one more bullet when they run out of ammo from shooting at you every time they saw you.

It’s like Laurie Strode forgiving Michael Myers or something. Yeah, yeah, I know the sibling connection was nixed in the excellent 2018 sequel. I’ve seen that movie twice now. And Dante isn’t fit to clean that woman’s eyeglasses after the stupid shit he did at the end of 5.

It made me so mad that Dante just up & abandoned everyone to waste his life fighting his worthless abusive brother in Hell like stupid children, while acting like all the awful things Vergil did to him & everyone else wasn’t even a big deal. And it’s sadly written as “a good scenario.” Seriously, fuck that! The writers basically insulted his character.

...Maybe Dante & Vergil should’ve just killed each other at the end of this abysmal story. What’s the point of living if you’re gonna act that way to your only surviving family? But they were never good family members to each other, or to Nero.

**_https://derelict-stranger.tumblr.com/post/185955463567/lovefromritsu-what-if-nero-didnt-make-it-to_ **

The story of 5 was a giant middle finger to anyone who wanted something new, different, and interesting. We got another worthless version of the status quo in which the shit-cycle continues and nothing is resolved.

The script-writers and Itsuno have sheer contempt for any good story ideas... and it SHOWS.

...Do y’all remember when Crapcom threw out a $25 “special edition” of DMC4 in 2015 that was just glorified DLC to people who already had the PC version of it? I remember! 3 characters? Oh, a recycled campaign. Big deal. No new lore? _Whoop-dee-shit!_ Thanks for nothing.

Then silence for the next 3 years.

Then these prima donnas have the audacity to shit out a lame rehash of the DMC3 story instead of actually putting EFFORT into a NEW story for DMC5 because they know a bunch of smooth-brains will clap for nostalgia like trained seals– even after Capcom and Ninja Theory mocked the fanbase for being rightfully angry with the horrible reboot game and the lead-up to its publication in January 2013.

[[I was not a fan of Devil May Cry at the time, so I was unaware of that until maybe 2 years later, but it doesn’t surprise me at all regarding how badly Capcom treated this series. The only Japanese game company that’s worse is Konami. …But when have those arrogant fucks made or published any games since MGSV?? I digress.]]

The story-lines for the DMC series were always below mediocre quality (3 and 1 were OK for the most part, at least) & I was dumb enough to believe that 5 would have the best story. Turns out I tripped right over that low bar. But the thing is that the characters in these games are usually cool enough to outshine those narratives with their actions. Sadly, the DMC cast is fairly low in number, so most of us were interested when new characters were announced. And they certainly were cool. But then—

“ _Hello, Devil May Cry fans! Check out these interesting new characters Urizen and V! Urizen is this badass terrifying demon leader instead of a boring corrupt human seeking to gain absolute power over both the worlds of devils and humanity! And V is a mysterious wizard who summons demons from DMC1 to help him fight! V is also playable for one-third of the game! Bet you’re excited, aren’t you? …well, that’s just too BAD, because they’re both ACTUALLY two halves of Vergil’s being! Having more than 10 consistent characters in the series is overrated and lame! …He was just a gimmick for an existing character! We took our inspiration from those Russian nesting dolls made out of wood! Aren’t the script writers so clever_?!”

NO, it is not clever at all. The reveal felt like it was tacked on before the script deadline because the writers are too boring and stupid to directly give Vergil his own character arc, even if it’s a prequel or side story. That’s why they wasted V and Urizen, and Griffon.

What idiotic, lazy, boring writing. It’s simply insulting.

And I also did not think they’d make it so painfully obvious with V as a name, or 5=V.

Hideo Kojima already did that with Venom Snake & Big Boss in MGSV: The Phantom Pain. Even though the latter was his weakest narrative-wise, he was still a better writer with most of the other games in the series, even though they are not perfect.

It was sadly apparently so in the Crimson Cloud lyrics, but I did not want to believe something so out in the open like that:

“ _Devil in my blood, living on the edge, Split myself in two etc_.”

Goddamn it.

The possibility of Vergil being controlled by Urizen &/or the Qliphoth Tree would be less far-fetched and make more SENSE. Vergil’s human/devil hybrid blood makes Urizen & the Qliphoth far more powerful than expected. They could have written it like that. Yeah, like why couldn’t Vergil have taken Yamato so he can go and eat the Qliphoth Fruit to defeat and kill “ _totally separate individual character_ ” Urizen in Hell or something? Like, Vergil thought he was gonna die anyway so he might as well try and take down another demon with him. When he’s eventually freed, Vergil might have _helped_ Dante, Nero, and V defeat Urizen— something cool like that. A plot-line like that would have made Vergil sympathetic. That would have been SO MUCH better than the crap we got!

…But no, he just HAD to be the same power-hungry scumbag he was in in DMC3.

If V HAD to have a connection with Vergil, something I would have seriously enjoyed is if V was a devil hunter exploring the remains of Mallet Island (where Vergil/Nelo Angelo was seen last) and he was nearly crippled in a demon attack there. However, he finds a cursed artifact related to Mundus that makes his body slightly more youthful, restores his ability to move/fight, and lets him summon demons— but it’s at a dangerous price. Maybe V has to eat the Qliploth Fruit to cure himself. The artifact could be the cane or the ring V wears or something else on his person. After V got his powers, he has visions of Vergil’s past or knowing who Urizen is or something. That would have worked out just fine! …Why couldn’t we have that??

Or why couldn’t V have been a friend of Lady or Nico as it had once been speculated? That would’ve been good. He could have been another demon hunter who was severely wounded during combat, hence his cane and the magic he uses to move around better.

“The Mysterious One”, my ass. Screw you, Capcom.

It was already obvious that the new villain Urizen would eventually be killed or returned to the Underworld regardless of who he was. But he could have been an interesting, powerful villain in his own right if the writers had not gone for a weak cop-out and just said: “ ** _Meh, let’s just make him Vergil’s devil side incarnate and call it a day_**.”

When V said “ ** _this demon is your reason for fighting_** ” to Dante, and when Urizen said “ ** _I have no name_** ” to Nero— I cringed. First of all, V was wrong. Dante’s reason for fighting is protecting humanity and the world at large from being destroyed or subjugated by demons again. Dante’s * **initial** * reason to fight and hunt demons was revenge against the demons for killing Eva and presumably Vergil (until he saw that Vergil was still alive and hated him for what the latter was doing in DMC3).

How I wish Urizen the character had been a real demon and Blake the writer had been on to something in his writing. Well, in the DMC setting, anyway. It’s annoying that they used a bunch of interesting William Blake references— but it all boils down to Vergil’s self-pity as he tries to destroy any remnants of his humanity at the remains of his murdered mother’s house, before his dominant demon goes on a rampage and ruins the human world again.

As I mentioned in my introduction to this chapter, The Book of Urizen poem is sadly not mentioned or referenced in any way.

**https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Urizen**

**https://www.bartleby.com/235/259.html**

We did not even get any cool references to William Blake’s incredible “Red Dragon” paintings.

**https://twitter.com/41strange/status/1147180990684520448?s=21**

...at least we still have the Hannibal series of horror/crime novels written by Thomas Harris, along with the 2002 film and the recent TV series based on the 1981 Red Dragon novel.

Vergil has the exact same behavior & role in DMC3. However, he also takes the role of Arkham in the form of V, having this alter-ego “help” Dante and the others reach the epicenter of the demon invasion. Like Arkham of DMC3, Vergil has purposely abandoned his humanity and harmed his child for the sake of gaining more demonic power.

And how is it that Vergil is only now using the Yamato to separate his demon and human side? Why is this a power that it has? There was no indication of Yamato being anything else than a sword that can separate the human and the demon **world**. The emphasis on “world” was canon for text & dialogue from 3 & 4; Yamato having an effect on an individual being/person was never mentioned before 5.

If Itsuno or whoever liked Vergil & V as much as he claimed to, then that pretentious hack would not have wasted V’s character as a gimmick and he in part would have actually made an effort into giving “regular Vergil” a real story arc instead of the “ ** _he hasn’t learned to be a better person in literally decades so I’m just gonna make him the main villain again as he was in DMC3.”_**

Nostalgia is a ball-and-chain that cripples decent storytelling because it encourages lazy cliché garbage to be put into the script. Devil May Cry 5 is a painfully clear example. The story of DMC5 slowly mutated back into DMC3 & frankly that’s insulting. Let’s just have history repeat itself AGAIN.

They make you love V just so they can hurt you when they take him away. Because the writers are awful.

...But was V even good in the first place because he’s part of Vergil? I doubt it.

There was no basis whatsoever for V to be part of Vergil, but the idiot writers crammed that shit in the story like a square piece into a triangular hole. They do not look, behave, or even sound similar. They are not “opposite”, they are just different men.

People who act like V & Vergil are “the same” will accept any godawful plot twist Crapcom throws in their faces.

_“Ackshually, if you like V, you have to know that you’re a Vergil stan (I hate that word), too because they’re the SAME person.”_

_“Then Urizen and Vergil are the same person as well.”_

_“NO, Vergil did NOT try to kill humanity in DMC5! Urizen is his devil half. They’re like, totally different!”_

Bull. Shit.

At least System Shock 2 and Bioshock 1 had only one character simply pretending to be another over a radio channel. And in Bioshock Infinite, there were literally alternate universes/dimensions involved. All 3 did this far better than Devil May Cry 5. I already mentioned MGSV: The Phantom Pain. Indeed V IS the “phantom pain” in this game.

Yeah, kill off the cool new guy with badass demon combat partners. Genius. The latter didn’t even have to die, you dicks. I still remember poor Griffon’s last moments.

And how were these versions of Griffon, Shadow, & Nightmare manifestations of “Vergil’s nightmares as Nelo Angelo” when he did not interact with those demons in DMC1? And if that was true, why would they even fight alongside V? It does not make sense. The narrative is not even cohesive.

[[ **NOTE** : I wrote the previous paragraph back in March, but I will be complaining about the Visions of V manga in chapter 3.]]

People didn’t use to call it Crapcom for nothing. Whoever makes a character like that, only to use him as a disposable pawn in the end is an imbecile and I would not trust them to write my grocery list.

All that story & character potential thrown in the trash bin. Way to go.

...I’m relieved that Nico did not turn out to be an android of some kind who breaks/dies in a demon attack and no one can revive her because they do not know how to repair androids. I would not put it past the writers to do something that lame.

It also seriously sucks that Trish & Lady were taken captive by Urizen early on and ending up as disguised boss fights. Screw the writers for wasting their roles, too. They had useless screen-time in 4 as well. I had hopes for them to kick some demon ass in this game. Also, in my first play-through, I had found the original Kalina Ann weapon in mission 10.

The DMC5 writer’s room at Crapcom better unfuck this mess. But I doubt they ever will.

Now more about Vergil because the events of the game were all his fault. What a surprise.

Instead of him being the villain again like he was here, I’m sure that any of you readers can imagine how interesting it would’ve been if there actually was a short DMC3 prequel in which you played as Vergil and the players got to learn more about him. Like his time in Fortuna and how he met Nero’s mother, for example.

...Nah, we’re never gonna get anything like that, though. We did not even get a chapter about Vergil in the “Before the Nightmare” prequel book to DMC5, which won’t be published in English anyway because Capcom are idiots.

A couple years of reading decent fan fiction & looking at artwork had somewhat skewed my perception of Vergil to being somewhat tragic & making incredibly bad choices.

But then I saw that canon Vergil is still a murderous sociopath in DMC5 & I don’t have any sympathy for him. Fuck that noise.

“ _Uhh yeah I still want to fight Dante because I refuse to stop my worthless highly uncalled for grudge for over 30 years, and I ruined the world again with the Qliphoth Tree that killed tens of thousands of people at least. …but I swear I’m just misunderstood & unloved or whatever. Even though I never loved another person since I was 8 and I’m obsessed with fighting my own brother and not even bothering to check if I had impregnated a woman I had sex with once. I actually found out that I have an adult son and it surprised me a little, but he means nothing to me_.”

Spare me the “woe is me” shit, OK?

Considering what he’s done, Vergil does not deserve to be loved, protected, or happy. He’s only happy when he’s fighting Dante, which shows to me how shallow he is.

“ _My human half is weak. Time to finally cut it out of me because I’m too stupid to stop & think that I should try a different approach to my life_.”

Fuck outta here. You’re such a pathetic coward that you choose to cut your being in 2 because you hate the way you were born.

But Vergil’s problem is not that he’s physically weak. 25 years after the events of DMC3 & he’s still just a stupid weak-minded egomaniac. He never wants to admit he’s wrong. He’s responsible for 2 major disasters; the first spread across a large metropolitan area or maybe a county (DMC3), the second was implied to be much worse (DMC5).

With great power comes great responsibility.

Vergil is too arrogant and too stupid to understand that.

The way I see it, he cared little for his father’s legacy or morality, only the power Sparda had wielded. When he reached adulthood, Vergil became the type of demon Sparda fought against.

People who are too arrogant often turn out not to be as smart as they think they are. If you’re excessively confident in yourself, you’re not going to listen to other people.

He shows no remorse for his crimes of raising the tower and the tree, or maiming his only son, or repeatedly trying to murder his brother.

Vergil is an abusive relative, plain & simple. It blows my mind how people love and romanticize this dime-a-dozen shitheel.

…But his childhood was saaaad & he hates his mother (who was brutally murdered) so he gets a free pass from the fandom morons, I guess.

As I mentioned before, giving someone like Vergil a second chance after all the shit he did is like giving someone one more bullet when they run out of ammo from shooting at you every time they saw you.

It’s like Laurie Strode forgiving Michael Myers or something. Yeah, yeah, I know the sibling connection was nixed in the 2018 sequel.

Imagine being such a piece of SHIT that you believe your mother abandoned you despite KNOWING that demons were attacking your house, and that it was very likely she was going to get killed.

I obviously blame the lazy writers for doubling down on keeping Vergil as a terrible, unsympathetic character instead of actually putting in effort to make him better and more interesting. However, that would involve writing a totally different story arc for him. At this point, I would’ve taken anything.

But he really crossed the event horizon with the Qliphoth Tree in this game.

What makes Vergil any better than Arkham from 3? Or The Order from 4? Right, nothing.

How many orphans & parents of dead kids did Vergil make during his summoning of The Tower in DMC3?

And even worse, The Qliphoth in DMC5– Red Grave City was perhaps the size of Philadelphia for all I know, and nearly everyone in RGC was killed because of Vergil and his unending greed for more power.

If one wants to get technical regarding current destruction & body counts— Vergil is actually the worst villain in the series aside from Mundus, who is well over 2000 years old and the entirety of DMC1 took place on an island with no humans.

Falsely claiming that Vergil isn’t a villain is like saying Pamela Voorhees from Friday the 13th isn’t a villain.

Something terrible & preventable happened to both characters, BUT they still killed people who had nothing to do with it. How is that NOT villainous?!

You made your bed, Vergil, now go lay in it. Take some responsibility for once in your life.

_“Bawww Vergil was traumatized and he had a bad childhood!!1!”_

Boo hoo, thoughts & prayers!

Lady is far more sympathetic & relatable than Vergil.

Lady was severely traumatized at age 17 and she _didn’t_ murder hundreds of thousands of people. Arkham murdered her mother and then he tried to murder _her_.

…But you’re attracted to Vergil so his trauma ™ matters above hers and everyone he killed.

But y’all don’t care about her because she’s a woman over age 40 now so you’re not attracted to her.

And Capcom does not care about writing a cool & badass role for Lady in 4 and 5. She only had a couple lines in 4– and in 5 she was a damsel in distress who didn’t do anything badass. She just looked sad and said some lines.

Like Arkham, Vergil became a power-hungry monster who would not think twice about murdering his own remaining family.

_Oh, the man I ripped an arm off of to take my sword back is actually my estranged son? I’m gonna try to kill him and then I’ll threaten him some more after he defeats me._

V even takes the role of Arkham in 5 as a man who seeks to gain a lot of demonic power by becoming Vergil again, after Urizen consumes the Qliphoth Fruit.

...Give me a story about Lady and her devil hunting work any day. She was great in 3 and her gameplay was fun in 4SE.

It astounds me how anyone could have believed that Vergil is the analytical logical type of character because of his cold attitude. He’s still a macho dumbass even if he’s subtle about it.

Aye ye ye! Even Kratos learned to be a better person in the most recent God of War game! What’s your fuckin’ excuse, Vergil?

All this blah blah high-falutin’ nonsense about V being Vergil’s human side is painfully stupid. Know why? All of Vergil’s negative traits he shows in 3 & 5 are basic awful human behavior. In DMC3 when Vergil was “a whole person” he gave zero indication of being remotely similar to V or “moral” in that game. He’s not an asshole because he is half-devil. He’s an asshole because he’s an asshole.

It’s not hard to figure to out. Vergil is a basic example of a toxic relative that you should stay away from.

He should’ve stayed dead or Nero should have killed him. It made me cringe that Nero saved the lives of his shitty relatives who don’t care about him. They only care about fighting each other.

Nero wanting to save Vergil is so stupid; the way they revealed Vergil is his father also stupid. Like, they had to get the entire cast to tell Nero not to kill Vergil * _just because_ *, since he has every reason to want to kill Vergil. He tore off Nero’s arm, nearly killed Dante, used Trish and Lady as vessels for demons to control, and he killed a city full of people. Why couldn’t we have a good revenge story about killing a horrible relative?

Why does Dante treat Vergil like no big deal when at this point Vergil has done even worse and chooses to continue using the Qliphoth that he created as Urizen? Especially when Dante told him if he ate the fruit he'd lose the one last piece of humanity he had left?! Vergil did not even hesitate in doing so.

It’s clear that Vergil doesn’t care about what he did, doesn’t feel any remorse about eating the fruit. It’s all about him, and in the end, he got the power he wanted.

“ _We are the sons of Sparda, and within each of us flows his blood… but more importantly, his soul. And now, my soul is saying that it wants to stop you_!”— Dante in Devil May Cry 3 (mission 20)

“ _It’s not about loss; strength is a choice. Fighting like hell to protect what’s important. You threw away everything you ever had… no wonder you have no true power_!”— Dante in Devil May Cry 5 (mission 17)

So much for that. Dante’s latter dialogue line makes the post-credits ending scene even worse.

It’s always style over substance with idiots. Nobody else seems to want a half-way decent story at all because they’re too shallow to care.

I don’t care that “V is Vergil” and “V” feels “sorry” about his crimes. The damage is done already. Your little apology tour ain’t gonna do shit.

In mission 17, Dante should have killed Urizen after he was maimed, and Nero should’ve held V back so he couldn’t become Vergil again. He should’ve just died. End it already.

It’s clear that the series’ writers did not even bother trying to redeem Vergil in any meaningful way. Just use the “muh sad childhood” excuse and the rubes will accept it.

The only reason a lot of people like Vergil is because most of ‘em were going through their “ _I love lame-ass edgelord anime guys_ ” phase or whatever in like 2006. Or the character is easy to play & he’s very strong in a fairly difficult action game.

He wasn’t even much of an interesting character aside from one-liners or whatever. People wrote headcanons & fanfiction because Capcom couldn’t be bothered writing anything more about him.

Also, just because like 95% of demons/devils in the DMC series are bad and purposefully destructive, humanity still sucks.

Indeed I’m sick of “humanity” being framed as a good thing in DMC just because most demons are evil. Humans are the most violent, murderous, destructive evil species to infect this unfortunate world in case you people haven’t noticed.

Vergil has a LOT of “humanity” in him & it SHOWS if you look at his character through the lens of misanthropy.

“ _People suck, and that’s my contention. I’m tired of all this back-slappin’ ‘isn’t humanity neat’ bullshit. We’re a virus with shoes, OK? That’s all we are_.”— Bill Hicks

That guy died in 1994, but that sentiment will be relevant from now to our extinction. Just sayin’.

I really DID wish that the canon father & son meeting near the end of the game was actually good— the ripping off Nero’s forearm incident being a really bad misunderstanding— and that Vergil was actually happy to know that he had another surviving relative. I would have been pleased with that.

…Man, we couldn’t even have THAT! The writers suck that much.

Look, I wasn’t expecting or asking for a big ending scene that runs for an hour or so like at the end of MGS4 with Big Boss and Solid Snake talking at the cemetery.

But it’s clear that the writers weren’t even trying in some of these bits.

How do I know? Urizen eating the Fruit of the Qliphoth Tree was never even mentioned again after he and V fused back into Vergil.

The prequel book “Before the Nightmare” has about 260 pages and Capcom refused to even bother writing about Vergil’s time in Fortuna before Nero was born. From Vergil’s dialogue in the DMC5 game, he did not know that he had a son.

-What did he do there?

-How long was he there for?

-Did The Order find out he was there?

-What was Vergil’s partner like?

-What was her name?

-How did they meet?

-Was she a devil, a hybrid, or a human?

-Was he there when she died, or was killed?

All that was ignored. So much character-building and story ideas were crassly thrown away yet again.

It would have been SO interesting if Nero’s mother had been a full-blooded devil or a hybrid, but sadly the writers at Crapcom never bothered with her.

It’s mildly amusing that Vergil wanted all this power but couldn’t achieve it, but his son can gain all this power through sheer motivation (haha screw you, Vergil) and doesn’t necessarily care for it as much as long as he’s strong enough to protect people he cares about.

At least it was pretty cool that Nero finally gained a Devil Trigger form without needing to possess a Devil Arm like Yamato. He simply wills his missing forearm to grow back before he transforms into a devil, which was badass.

...Now on to the finale of this rant.

Why couldn’t the ending have been Dante and Vergil walking up to the Devil May Cry building together instead of fighting each other in Hell for a month like idiots?! That’s all they have now? How fucking pathetic.

Dante even says: “ _Sometimes I think this will never end_.”

Of course it won’t, and I mean that in a bad way.

…What’s that thing with “fridging” a female character some people refer to? Because that’s the feeling I’m getting about what these shitty writers want to do with Dante & Vergil.

The ending of DMC5 in particular sucks because these awful script writers just want to “fridge” Dante & Vergil in Hell after 10 goddamn years without a proper sequel to DMC4 because they’re too boring, lazy, & stupid to come up with a good story for the 2 characters, which is why Itsuno apparently wants Nero as the main character so badly. It’s trash.

Now it’s like "duhh everything’s OK now. Vergil was just being stupid but he's back to crackin’ jokes and him and Dante are having a lot of fun in hell together wasting their lives.”

Vergil killed so many people, and it’s just hand-waved like he was involved in a fender bender or something.

The irony is that Dante would not have had to go into Hell in the first place if Vergil did not nearly kill off humanity by raising the Qliphoth. If the latter did not become Urizen, it could have hypothetically been destroyed in the prologue mission.

I hated the ending the most about the story

Dante & Vergil apparently sever the Qliphoth tree roots and seal the portal that its growth had opened. But even with Yamato, are they able to return to the human world? My expectations for the series are lower than ever.

Vergil has Yamato, but who’s to say that he will willingly use it to open a way back home? I certainly don’t trust him at all. Vergil could open a way to Earth and leave Dante behind. He’s enough of a loathsome back-stabber to do that.

Either way, a shitty person got his way in the end. What a bleak message. But that’s the way of the world, isn’t it?

I found the original Kalina Ann weapon in Mission 10. Will Lady force Dante to drag his worthless ass out of Hell so he can give her back her 2 rocket launchers? Here’s hoping.

If Itsuno really did call this closure on the “sons of Sparda” story, I call him a hack writer. Even more so since he actually wants a sequel for the terrible 2013 game. He should not have directed DMC5, but Crapcom begged him to.

And screw Capcom as a whole for approving that abominable “reboot” in the first place.

It seems to me that he thought:

“ _Meh. If the other hacks & I shove in enough vapid fanservice instead of making actual effort to tell a new and interesting story for the series, the rubes won’t care or they won’t be able to tell the difference_.”

He and the other writers ruined ANY chance of this series having a halfway decent story. You keep burying DMC3 in the Pet Sematary but it comes back messed up.

“ _OH, but where’s that playable Vergil like we thought we would get_??”

…Haha, bitch you thought.

Well, people were so gung-ho defending that idiotic plot-twist with V secretly being Vergil because that’s how painfully abysmal the writing is, that’s all you people are getting. Because screw having a bigger cast, right?

I’m so disgusted that they looked at this script and said: _“Yep, this is what we’re gonna do. No need to review any other options.”_

But wow, I learned my lesson. I’ll keep my expectations low and downgrade accordingly.

And I’m sure as hell not wasting a dime on a “special edition” scam released in 8 years.

...What a malignantly useless story.

Fuck it.

“ _As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible_.”— Proverbs of Hell by William Blake


	3. Visions of V, a bleak foregone conclusion

**Visions of V, even more wasted narrative potential**

I genuinely do not understand why this prequel manga even exists because we all presumably know the ending. Why even bother caring about it? V is not even his own man.

Everyone who played Devil May Cry 5 knows that V & his 3 familiars were just sacrificial gimmicks that were borne from bad storytelling.

The writers relied on a stupid good/evil binary instead of actually putting EFFORT into Vergil’s character, & a decent story in general.

In mission 18, Griffon tells Dante that he, Shadow, & Nightmare represent “Vergil’s nightmares” from DMC1 or some bullshit. Then they fight him so Dante kills them.

But by the end of the game, Vergil learns absolutely nothing and shows zero remorse or self-reflection as a character.

In short, those characters died for nothing.

Dante would eventually come to know about the Qliphoth Tree anyway, so what was even the point?

It's a “shoot the shaggy dog story” and it will end as a depressing foregone conclusion.

V & his familiars all die and we will never see them again, so an evil man gets a second chance at life without being punished like he deserved to be. And his idiot brother goes into Hell with him to waste their useless lives fighting like stupid children and they’re quipping at each other like nothing’s wrong.

What a godawful ending.

I refuse to read any of it. I HATE what the writers did.

And HOW did V have an innate ability to use magic if he’s Vergil’s “human” part? It makes zero sense.

And where is V’s cane after Mission 18?

How many times will these idiot writers shit the bed?

...The only way I can see Crapcom unfucking this narrative mess as it stands regarding V— is to write that he was a human soul in Hell without many memories of his old life (perhaps he’s a dead sorcerer that hunted demons) that “latched on” to Vergil’s being when the latter somehow managed to escape. When Vergil stabbed himself like the incorrigible moron he is, he expelled both V and the “human bits” of his soul or something.

I thought that bit up on my way to a restaurant last weekend. It was only a few minutes of pondering narrative ideas.

But the terrible writers do not even care about the characters that already exist.

Lady and Trish just show up, get their asses kicked by Urizen, are used as “vessels” for 2 boss fights, they look sad and defeated for the rest of the game, they say some stuff. That’s it.

What garbage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The upcoming 4th chapter is by far the most difficult for me to write, since I have not written any fanfiction since I was 16 or so. That's about 8 years now. Here's hoping that I don't suck.  
> I much prefer working on original stories, mostly horror, but this is a special case because this game series did mean a lot to me. It hurts to see the 5th game's narrative potential wasted so badly with good ideas tossed in the figurative trash compactor.


	4. How I Would Improve Devil May Cry 5’s Story

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, this regrettably took a long time to finish, because most of this is fanfiction ideas and straight-up prose.
> 
> But I was hellbent on doing so, and I was determined to write Vergil’s character in a way that's far more interesting & sympathetic than the bullshit Capcom hacked up & shoved in their horrible script.
> 
> I had no choice to write this thing in general. I was so excited for this game for 9 months, but the godawful story just annihilated that. I haven't touched DMC5 in about 5 months, according to my PS4 data. It seriously sucks, people.
> 
> Some of the scenes I came up with were such a pain to complete in a way I considered half-way decent.
> 
> There are quite a few Notes about the material at the end here, like why I put such-&-such in the chapter. Don't forget to read that.
> 
> I listened to soooo many horror movie soundtracks (also DMC1 and Silent Hill series soundtracks) writing this. It was a main inspiration, haha.

**How I Would Improve Devil May Cry 5’s Story**

This long chapter is composed of several parts: Ideas 1, 2, 3, Ending Ideas, and Miscellaneous Grievances/ Conclusion.

I had to rewrite most the general story plot myself, because coming up with GOOD story ideas apparently takes too much effort for Capcom.

They clearly could have brought Vergil back in a more interesting way without making him the villain (stealing Nero’s arm notwithstanding), but they limited themselves on purpose by doing the latter.

The storytelling was terrible because Capcom’s writers are too boring and too spineless to show regular Vergil in a vulnerable situation, showing a normal range of emotions— so they just said “ _screw it_ ” and shamelessly turned the characters V and Urizen into stand-ins for his human and devil halves: a stale binary of good-ish & evil instead of actually trying something like nuance for once.

It’s cliché. It’s **boring**. It’s not clever or entertaining.

There were other, **better** ways to do DMC5’s story, and I will prove it for (regrettably) free.

** IDEA 1 **

The possibility of Vergil being controlled by Urizen &/or the Qliphoth Tree would have been less far-fetched and made more SENSE. Vergil’s human/devil hybrid blood makes Urizen & the Qliphoth far more powerful than expected. They could have written it like that. This idea will be expanded upon in **IDEA 3** , but I will continue with the basics here.

Why couldn’t Vergil have taken Yamato from Nero so he can go try to defeat and kill “totally separate individual character” Urizen in Hell or something? Like, Vergil thought he was going to die anyway so he might as well try and take down another demon with him. He figured if he did die, perhaps Yamato would also be destroyed or lost forever in Hell, so it would be very difficult to reopen a portal to the human world again after he severed the Qliphoth’s roots in their initial stage of growth. ...Well, that was his initial plan.

In-game, V could still tell Nero that “ _it was Urizen that took your arm_ ”, but he would be mistaken in my version.

Following Vergil’s defeat by Urizen, the former’s still-living body was used as a vector of sorts for all of the human blood sacrificed to The Qliphoth Tree. In the actual game, you recall that Dante somehow survived via the Qliphoth roots and became stronger despite the month-long coma from his last failed fight with Urizen.

When Vergil is eventually freed from the base of the Qliphoth Tree trunk near the end of the game (beginning of say, mission 18), he could have helped Dante, Nero, and V defeat Urizen. That would have been **SO MUCH** better than the crap we got, and it actually would have made Vergil a sympathetic character with a far better motive that shows **genuine character development** instead of using V as a sacrificial gimmick for that. And what V went through in DMC5 did not even matter, because it’s clear that Vergil had learned nothing from that man. He showed **zero remorse or self-reflection**.

“ _The Mysterious One_ ”, my ass.

At least System Shock 2 and Bioshock 1 had one character simply pretending to be another character over a radio channel. The Bioshock 2 epilogue “Minerva’s Den” did an interesting and well-written job, too. And in Bioshock Infinite, there were literally alternate universes involved. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain even made sense with Big Boss’s double, Venom Snake. …So yes, these games did this idea FAR better than Devil May Cry 5 did.

** IDEA 2 **

If V HAS to have a connection with Vergil, what if V was a devil hunter exploring the ruins of Mallet Island a few years (or longer) before DMC5 begins, and he was nearly crippled in a demon attack there.

However, as he drags his body through the ancient dungeons, he finds a **cursed artifact related to Mundus** that makes his body more youthful, restores his ability to move, and lets him summon demons to fight for him— but it’s at a dangerous price. The cane is the only way V can kill demons (if he uses a human weapon, it will not work), and his life-span has been severely shortened.

V must eat the Qliploth Fruit to cure himself and regain his normal lifespan. The **artifact** could be the **cane** or the **ring** V wears, or something else. ...Eh, perhaps the **ring** , that makes sense.

After V gets his powers— his curse— he has visions of Vergil’s past (as Nelo Angelo or as regular Vergil before that), or knowing who Urizen is, something. That can also work, regarding V recognizing the Angelo demons he & Nero fight, and his explanation to Nero of who he is and how that relates to V exploring the ruins near Dante & Vergil’s childhood home.

I would have **loved** to see footage of V fighting demons with different weapons in the semi-flooded ruined dungeons of Mallet Island and a scene in which he finds the cursed Mundus artifact, or he meets Griffon, Shadow, and Nightmare for the first time.

Imagine seeing the ruins in DMC1 with DMC5’s graphics. That would’ve been **SO cool**. DMC1 still looks very good, design-wise.

The character deserved to be so much more than a mere tool and a gimmick. So did Griffon.

...I wonder what **would** happen if V was able to eat the Qliphoth Fruit & save his life at the end of Mission 17 instead of them fighting Urizen [[that will be Mission 20 in my fanfic narrative here]]. Not only does his own body stop decaying, but his familiars become more powerful & they do not need V’s killing blow to destroy other demons.

 ** _However_** , the Fruit was actually one mere _seed_ , and its power from that single fragment is evident, because V gains a complete Devil Trigger as the demonic energy surges through his being.

I was inspired by The Thing (1982), The Fly (1986), Bloodborne, and Resident Evil 7 for creepy transformation imagery.

There’s a lot of screaming and convulsing on V’s part because it’s excruciatingly painful and freaky. It is a genuinely terrifying experience for him, & he reacts by going slightly feral. Thankfully, Dante is able to subdue V in a brief fight and hold him down until V returns to human form again.

**[EXAMPLE OF POSSIBLE SCENE from my version of the middle of MISSION 17, in which Dante & Griffon go with V while Nero takes another path]:**

Griffon shows genuine worry as he flies in pursuit of Dante & V.

“Whoa, whoa, Dante! You’re not gonna really hurt him, are ya?! V’s not quite himself here, but I’m sure you noticed!”

“Of course I won’t hurt him! Sure, he’s big and scary-lookin’ now, but I can still incapacitate a devil when I need to— oh jeez!”  
Dante’s shoulder almost got mangled by V’s claws. He brought his hand up, trying to grab V’s wrist. The latter snarls, yanking his arm away before he leaps toward a lower ledge in the tunnel.

“I would try grabbin’ him with my claws, but he’s enormous. He’ll just try tearin’ me to shreds and we’ll both crash,” Griffon remarks, annoyed.

“I’ll get him back, don’t get your feathers ruffled,” Dante replies, keeping his eye on V, still running away.

DANTE: “There are some cases in which humans turned into monsters or had other weird crap happen when they touched or consumed demonic objects. I just had to figure out how to break the curse, or let it run its course. With your friend the way he is, we’ll just need to wait.”

V reaches a dead end, and as he’s busy trying to claw his way through the wall of tree roots, Dante makes his move.

[[FOR A SMALL FIGHT IDEA, THE BEST WAY TO INCAPACITATE V WOULD BE TO USE EITHER BALROG OR DANTE’S MAIN SWORD TO STUN HIM. DANTE ATTEMPTS TO GRAPPLE HIM AS V’s STAMINA GOES DOWN OVER THE COURSE OF THE BATTLE. KEEP IN MIND THAT V’S DEVIL FORM IS ALMOST NIGHTMARE’S SIZE, SO DANTE HAS A BIG OPPONENT TO WRESTLE WITH]]

He lunges forward, grabbing V by the edge of one wing and pulling him back. The young devil struggles fiercely, but Dante successfully restrains him.

When V turns back into a human, he gasps in surprise, trying to steady his breath. He looks scared.  
“I’m sorry... I was not prepared for that. Did I hurt you...?”

Dante puts a hand on his shoulder. “You didn’t hurt us. The stress of the transformation just freaked you out. Trust me. It gets easier as time goes on. I can help you with it.”

V makes a wan smile. “...Thank you, Dante. I appreciate that.”

Dante hands V the cane he dropped earlier. “Sure thing. But for now, you should continue with your typical style of fighting. I can’t have you losing yourself when we’re so close to killing Urizen and getting out of here.”

 **Author’s Note:**  
**Nero can activate his Devil Trigger using any of the d-pad buttons in the PS4 version’s default settings.**  
**I consider a small move-set for V’s Devil Trigger in combination with the O button. The O button was initially used to summon Nightmare & use its attacks, but V fused with Nightmare for his new Devil form (more on that later). So Nightmare fight combos can now be V’s and the button configuration does not have to change much.**

**V’s Devil Trigger looks like this:** (ARTIST CREDIT HERE: click on the picture, then click through the larger gallery until you see 12/22) **https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium &illust_id=74950525**

**IDEA 3**

Here, **MISSION 18** will be called **AWAKENING**.

Dante senses Vergil’s presence in the trunk of the tree as he, Nero, & V get closer to Urizen’s lair.

“I don’t believe this...” Dante mutters aloud, almost to himself as he stops walking.

Nero hears him. “Believe what?”

Dante’s tone is quiet but curious. “If you still had your Devil Bringer, you would be able to sense it, too. You mentioned to me that it briefly had some kind of reaction when you sensed powerful demonic energy.”

V steps forward. “We’re getting close to Urizen. But judging by this surface here, we seem to be next to an interior trunk wall of the Qliphoth. What do you sense?”

Dante nods. He knows something. “Stand back.”

He draws his sword, stabbing it deeply into the trunk. He cuts a vertical rectangle through it, forming a hole. Dante places the piece of wood aside and looks into the faint darkness.

Vergil is trapped within; his forearms are shackled with small Qliphoth vines to the tree wall. He is unconscious, but alive. Near him, the unsheathed Yamato sword hums with energy, a vine curled around the hilt.

Nero frowns, recognizing the sword, and the other man’s familiar face. “Is that your—”

Dante remains steady, despite the genuine surprise in his expression. “...yes, he is, Nero. But we have to cut him out of here first. C’mon.”

They carefully sever the vines as Griffon and Shadow keep watch over the tree corridor they’re all in.

Dante pulls Vergil out of the tree, laying him on his back. Nero takes Yamato and sheathes it, holding the sword in his left hand.

“So how should we wake him up? He stole my arm to take his sword back, and I have a lot of questions for him,” Nero said tersely.

Dante’s voice is serious: “You’ll have even more once we’re out of here. I know you probably want to strangle him right now, but you’ll have to wait until we’re finished with all this. ...He has a lot to tell us.”

Griffon swoops down. “You can always try to _stab him awake_ like V tried with Dante! Only V was being a total dumbass about it and he—”

Dante immediately stands in the bird’s way.  
“No no no no. I am **_not_ **doing that. ...God, I’ll just do CPR, all right? V, control your pet, please.”

Nero shook his head in response to the argument, bending down and putting Yamato in Vergil’s hand.

As Dante is about to check Vergil’s pulse, the latter stirs awake, opening his eyes.

Dante takes a step back, gesturing for Nero and V to do the same.

Vergil slowly gets to his feet, his expression a mix of slight confusion and frustration. He looks at Dante for a minute, and recognition flickers back into his eyes.

He speaks. “...I don’t understand. I was dying when I came here. How long has it been?”

Dante answers.  
“One month. When I was first defeated by Urizen, I landed in the city outside of the Tree and ended up in a coma. A friend who brought me here said that the Qliphoth somehow kept me alive. I briefly questioned that, but I realized that my hybrid blood made a powerful conduit for the rest of the human blood going through the Tree’s system. The same must apply to you, too. Unfortunately, this has made Urizen stronger than expected.”

Vergil listens patiently to the explanation, but he frowns at the end of it. “...so I couldn’t destroy it.”

DANTE: “Well, no. But we can still destroy it today and kill Urizen if you’re up for that.”

Vergil stares at him quietly for a few seconds before nodding his head.

He looks at Nero, V, and Griffon warily. “Who are they?”

DANTE: “They’re friends. We can trust them. We’ve already killed hundreds of demons together on the way here.”

Vergil’s gaze lingers on Nero’s cyborg right arm for a minute before he looks away. The realization is still noticeable, though.

Nero sternly maintains eye contact as they continue on their way.

“Yeah, yeah, we both know what happened,” he grumbles, irritated.

Vergil stares at Nero again. “How did you get this?” He gestures with Yamato.

Nero hesitantly tells him about the fight with Agnus 5 years ago, the broken sword in his lab. He explains how the sword seemed to repair itself after it sensed Nero’s apparently fatal injuries, unleashing a partial Devil Trigger.

Vergil remarks at how unusual that is, that only a person with the blood of Sparda could do that.

Dante looked apprehensively between the two of them. The pieces are coming together, he realizes, as do Nero and Vergil.

“You... you’re my son?” Vergil says quietly.

Nero frowns in surprise. “I... you tell me.” His voice is low, curious.

Vergil tries to hide the grief and shock written on his face. It does not work.

“You are. There’s no other explanation as to how your presence could have repaired Yamato. ...I last saw your mother 25 years ago. We had been moving from place to place in the southeast, and you weren’t born when the storm hit. I wasn’t there at the time, and I blame myself. ...She really did escape, I knew it. I searched three different states, returned to Fortuna several times. I still couldn’t find her, or you. I tried to ignore it, but the realization that demons had finally caught up to her... and I was not there again—”

He trails off, looking away. The audience cannot see his face in this moment, but his body language is guarded and uneasy.

Vergil spoke again, his voice strained. His expression is not shown. “Her loss, and yours, broke me a second time.”

The others did not say a word while he spoke. Dante was deep in thought, pondering what his brother did not tell him when they were both 18, and looking for the “why”.

“...Why didn’t you tell me this, Dante?” Nero asks, his voice resigned.

Dante sighs, looking at Nero apologetically.  
“I _am_ sorry, Nero. I immediately knew when I saw Yamato respond as if it was your own sword. I should have told you, but I guess that I was afraid of saying it. Our meeting was off to a rocky start considering what The Order’s leadership was up to, and I didn’t want to permanently interrupt your life by telling you about your father. I thought that I accidentally killed him 15 years ago on Mallet Island. I didn’t even know that it was him until his— his _body_ dropped his half of the amulet we had since we were children.”

[[Here, Vergil explains his motives for taking Yamato back; see **IDEA 1**.]]

“You could’ve just told me what was about to happen! I would have listened to you!” Nero says, exasperated.

“I didn’t tell you because I initially did not know who you were. And I expected to die when I fought him. That way, at least Yamato would seal the Qliphoth away for another two millennia,” Vergil responds sternly.

V stepped forward; he almost put his hand on Vergil’s shoulder, but thinks better of it.  
“...May I ask how you came to know of The Qliphoth and Urizen’s return? You’ll be of great help in killing him.”

Vergil stares at V suspiciously. This man and the demon bird were strangers to him, but he had an explanation to give.

 **[cue voiceover and a short montage of context-related images as Vergil speaks:]**  
_“The Underworld is magnitudes older than human existence; it came into being when the Earth first formed. There are more ancient demons than Mundus and Urizen, but they all seem to be dormant, sealed away by powerful magic I know nothing of. Urizen had gone by multiple names in many languages used by both demons & humans. That was his most common name, used by William Blake. As to whether Blake actually knew of Urizen’s true existence as a former ruler of the Underworld several thousand years ago, I don’t know. However, I’m sure that Urizen the devil somehow knew of Blake the author.”_

 **[montage changes as Vergil continues talking:]**  
_“There were several dozen ancient demonic texts found in the secret archives of Fortuna, so I snuck into the city to find them, as well as learning what I could about Sparda’s life in Hell and on Earth. To my surprise, I found that another devil had beaten me to it by three hundred years. She realized what I was and what I was looking for the minute she saw me.”_

**[Here, the scene changes to a short story within a story cut-scene approximately 8 minutes long, without Vergil’s narration. As you can see, I’m a prose writer, not a screenwriter, so I just stuck to writing descriptively like usual.]**

The devil hiding in Fortuna— eventually Vergil’s lover & Nero’s mother— is named Morgan Vaughn.  
I was slightly inspired by characters in the story “ **The Great God Pan** ” for her name. Her devil name? I have no idea. I did not make one because she didn’t use it for 300 years.

( _ **AN** : Sparda was literally over 2000 years old when he and Eva met, so I don’t think that devils care too much about ages if they mate with other devils, hybrids, or humans_.)

Morgan translated Fortuna’s demonic texts officially... **and** secretly. She had the job for about 10 years, but she had broken into the archives and translated them herself over the course of three centuries, taking notes and conducting research on her own, with the humans being none the wiser.

When she lived in Hell, she had feared execution for seeking forbidden knowledge of ancient devils before the rule of Mundus. In the human world, she is still worried that higher-level demons will keep coming after her.

She and Vergil strike a connection with each other. Since Sparda died before his sons turned 8, Vergil is almost excited that he could listen to an actual devil tell him about who she is and what the Underworld is like.

Morgan laments about her need to live in secrecy in the guise of a human.  
_“It’s ironic that I have to hide from the Legions of Hell in this city of zealots, because The Order of the Sword would immediately kill me if they found out what I really am. Weird; they claim to worship a devil who had protected humanity. But he has to be dead by now. He’s not coming back. All I have is myself and these old books_.”

Vergil states that he is one of Sparda’s sons, and that he snuck into Fortuna to research anything people knew about his father. Morgan is intrigued, but rather skeptical. Vergil is almost 17 years old here, despite acting like he lived longer than that. She’s still interested in his story and his motives that he didn’t talk about yet; it beat the boredom of day-to-day life here— aside from various demon attacks.

After a few days of living with her, Vergil reveals more about his short life to Morgan, and she tells him about the demonic texts she had translated. She was particularly interested in the Ruler of the Underworld from 6000 years ago: Urizen. He had seized power over Hell via the growth of the Qliphoth and harnessed its demonic energy.

“ _How long until the Qliphoth Tree grows again_?” Vergil asked her.

“ _About 50 years to a century, according to this text_ ,” said Morgan. “ _It grows stronger by feeding upon the blood of humans and hybrids, eventually making a demonic fruit that will make the one who eats it incredibly powerful. I never saw it myself, though. It grows only once every 2000 years_.”

She stared at the scrolls, and the translation she made, picking up a page and frowning.

“ _Mundus still lives. I know that. He festered so much vengeance against your father for centuries. I know that Sparda is dead, and Mundus can’t do anything to him. But he got to you, didn’t he_?” Morgan gave him a sympathetic look, putting her hand on his.

Vergil sighed, looking away. “ _He did. My mother was murdered, and I don’t know what happened to Dante. I didn’t find his body. He might have died of his injuries after escaping the house, or he’s still alive and unable to find me_. “

They don’t speak much for the rest of that night.  
\---------------------------------------------------------------------------

After a month in the city, Vergil offers that they could leave Fortuna together. “ _What’s stopping you? The Order of the Sword? They’re all humans, but you aren’t_.”

Morgan expresses concern about the demons after her. “ _And once they find out who you are, they won’t stop until we’re both killed. Not that I’m scared of them-- I’m just frustrated of trying to live with them breathing down my neck_.”

“ _We can hunt and kill these demons together_ ,” Vergil assures her.

The next three months are rough. Since they had a number of forbidden demon texts/artifacts, they don’t stay in one place for long as they move around the southeastern coast of the U.S.A. and areas inland.

Morgan was correct about demons finding them, and the attacks got worse. She & Vergil fought back and killed the demons every single time, but it wasn’t easy, since they didn’t want to draw unnecessary attention to other devil hunters.

Despite this, they were genuinely happy together. At long last, neither of them had to be alone. For the time being, life was pretty good. They were together for about a year.

Unfortunately, it didn’t last.

Morgan, 7 months pregnant, goes missing during hurricane season while Vergil is out of town. He was to return the next day.

The weather report said that the storm would not go that far inland until the 22nd, but it moved quicker than expected. The hurricane tore right through the town they were staying in.

**Author’s Note:**  
**I was reading about hurricanes a month ago, & I used this one as an inspiration because Hugo was the worst of 1989:**  
**https://www.weather.gov/ilm/hurricanehugo**  
**https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/north-carolina/charlotte/worst-hurricane-charlotte/**  
**https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qqxFWPc4ZQ**  
**https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SV31wmBM1Q**  
**http://www.hurricanescience.org/history/storms/1980s/hugo/**

Vergil returns to a desolate, empty neighborhood full of collapsing buildings, fallen trees, and flooded streets. The small rental house he and Morgan had stayed in looked like it was torn in half.

Horrified by the sight, he searches the wreckage for any sign of her, but she’s not there.

He notices an old blood patch on the floor and some more of it had splattered on an undamaged door. The scent is hers and someone unfamiliar. Neither sample was human.

From outside, he heard growling and scratching at the debris. There were only 6 demons, but it was enough for Vergil to take out his frustration.

Morgan’s body wasn’t in the area. If she was alive, how far could she have gone in a day, or twelve hours? She could not fly in the hurricane.

The flooding made the trail cold, but he didn’t care. He had to keep looking.

...I speculate that Nero somehow got back to Fortuna as an infant because other humans found him. Morgan fought a pack of demons, but she eventually died of her injuries. Baby Nero was alone with her corpse. After burying Morgan, the humans who found him brought him to the orphanage in Fortuna because it was presumably the closest one in the area.

**Author’s Note:**  
**Unless I’m mistaken, & apologies if I am, the single-night events of DMC3 occur in 1990 or so. I think Dante & Vergil were 18 or 19. I thought I had read that somewhere, but it was years ago.**

I really did wish that the canon father & son meeting near the end of the game was _**actually good**_ — the ripping off Nero’s right arm incident being a horrible misunderstanding— and that Vergil was actually **_happy_ **to know that he had another surviving relative.

For God’s sake, we couldn’t even have **THAT**! Fans waited years for something, anything regarding a decent father-son moment between Vergil and Nero.

We got **_bupkes_**.

Look, I wasn’t expecting or asking for a big scene that runs for almost an hour or so like at the end of MGS4 with Big Boss and Solid Snake talking at the cemetery.

But it’s clear that the DMC5 writers were not even trying in some of these bits.

How do I know?

Urizen eating the Fruit of the Qliphoth Tree in Mission 17 was never even mentioned again after he and V fused back into Vergil.

**MOVING ON—**

Dante & Vergil, Nero, & V are separated as parts of the Qliphoth start collapsing, so they must reach Urizen via different paths.

Like other missions in which you can play as two or 3 different characters, you will see the other characters as you make your way through. This mission area’s environment gets increasingly more hostile as the characters get closer to Urizen, with the tunnels collapsing around them, demons ambushing, and plenty of hazards regarding the Qliphoth tree itself as a living organism. You’ve seen aggressive vines and roots in earlier missions that attack the player character, a small Little Shop of Horrors esque boss in mission 1, and the Nidhogg boss in mission 4. Stuff like that is common here.

[[ **VERY GOOD IDEA** : When playing my version of **mission 18** as Dante, Vergil will fight alongside him. Vergil can use Balrog as a secondary weapon.]]

Dante speaks with Vergil as they descend into a yawning dark tunnel framed by crumbling building foundations and broken pipes mixed with pulsing bio-luminescent roots.

“Something tells me that neither of us are gonna have an easy walk down here,” he mutters to himself, drawing his twin pistols.

He looks at his brother, who is walking cautiously nearby. There was more than enough space for him to draw and attack with Yamato when they were both eventually ambushed by demons.

“I think that’s the most I’ve ever heard you say in my life, and I’m not joking,” Dante says to him.

Vergil frowns. “...We didn’t see each other that much after we turned eight.”

“I know. That’s my point,” Dante replies sadly.

He continues. “When we were 17, before all this shit started with you summoning the tower— you could have looked for me. You could have told me about what happened, with you and Morgan, with most of your life before that too, I mean. ...I would have listened to you. You didn’t have to keep it to yourself.”

Vergil sighs, looking away. “I did not think it would matter if I told anyone. I couldn’t do anything to stop what happened to her. I wasn’t there. When we were children and our mother was murdered, I was just weak.”

Dante walks up to him, putting a hand on his back in sympathy.  
“I’m sorry. You told us that you expected to die here after you took Nero’s arm and Yamato, but you don’t have to anymore. You’re no longer dying like Nero described you as. We’re still able to kill Urizen and cut the Qliphoth out of the human world. That’s what you’re powerful enough to do.”

Vergil scowls. “I know that.”

“Did you fear the fact that Nero is my son?” he questions, an edge in his voice.

Dante is quiet for a minute, his lips tight as he tries and fails to find an acceptable answer.  
“Yes… initially. He certainly wasn’t on friendly terms with me when I killed the leader of The Order to bait him into fighting me. I had held back so I could observe him fight, and he literally beat me into the ground with his demonic arm. He was rather territorial about keeping Yamato when we fought a second time. Finders keepers, you know. His disposition was generally hostile & he was suspicious of most people who bothered him. He got somewhat better after we killed a bunch of demons and the leader of the island’s cult.”

“I would have taken him back with me...” Vergil says, more to himself than to Dante. He looks up at his brother again. “He apparently hated it in Fortuna. It did not suit who he is at all, from what little you just told me. But I’m pleased that my son is actually alive.”

“Then you really have to make it up to him for tearing his arm off. He’s still mad about that despite your explanation,” Dante reminds.

He notices a badly beat-up phone booth in some wreckage, and rushes over to it.

“C’mon, please work!” he says, putting a quarter in the machine and dialing a number.

Vergil walks up, inspecting it. “...pay phones still exist? And how can they still work down here, anyway? Most of the powerlines are trashed.”

“Don’t jinx me. This is important.” Dante waves his hand hurriedly.

There’s an answer on the other end of the line. “Hello?”

DANTE SMILES. “Lady! It’s Dante. I’m glad I could reach you. It’s pretty sketchy down here. But I’ll make this quick as I can.”

LADY: “You in one piece, Dante? I hope so. It’s gotten a lot worse top-side. There are more demons out now compared to the last time we all met up.”

DANTE: “Are Trish and Nico all right?”

LADY: “They’re as all right as they can be in this situation. But the Qliphoth is acting up badly. Roots are springing up as we drive, and they’re tossing broken-down cars and pieces of rubble at the van!”

[SCENE JUMPS TO HER PERSPECTIVE: THE ROAD, OR WHAT’S LEFT OF THIS ONE, IS CHAOTIC AS A PACK OF DEMONS GIVE CHASE]

DANTE: “Urizen knows that we’re getting closer to him, and that we’re gonna put him back in the ground for good. But I need you three on your best offensive, all right? Go to the demon hot-spots in the city and kill as many as possible. Do the same thing for the Qliphoth roots. Blow them up, burn ‘em down. I don’t care. Anything works as long as they stay dead, capiche?”

LADY: “…As if you’d have to ask us that! We’re on it! Nico has been working on some kickass weapons while you guys were gone.”

DANTE: “Good, good! Say hi to Nico and Trish but stay alive, OK?”

LADY: “Oh, we will. And so help me, you better bring my rocket launchers back to me in good shape.”

She hangs up.

Dante and Vergil hear a mass of chittering noises and snarls, and a pack of Scissor demons and Furies surge out of the buildings.

“I was wondering when they’d show their faces!” Dante exclaimed, dodging a pair of rusty shears wielded by one of the floating phantoms, before drawing his shotgun.

“They shouldn’t have bothered,” Vergil commented through gritted teeth, beheading a Fury demon with Yamato as it teleported in front of him.

**When a character gets to a certain point of the level, the perspective will switch to the 3 women, who are tearing up key points of the Qliphoth and various demon nests in cut-scenes. They are not playable, but it’s entertaining to watch regardless.**

**Because the ladies are fighting demons on the surface, there are Divinity Statues for abilities and upgrades throughout this mission like in previous games, instead of summoning Nico’s RV.**  
\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

**Griffon speaks with V.**

The two of them, and Shadow, are making their way through the crumbling remnants of a pipe system in the sewers, which had flooded earlier when the Qliphoth tree took over Redgrave City.

“Your tattoos have changed after you turned back into a human,” the bird remarks.

V touches his chest briefly. “My being has permanently fused with Nightmare, and it’s no longer an external entity that I can summon.”

“Weird. ...I was worried about ya, y’know. You were in a world of hurt when you turned into a demon. That seriously sucks,” Griffon says.

V sighs. “I did what I had to do in order to break the curse. Although I am not fully human anymore, I’m no longer that demon’s experiment, nor am I influenced by his cursed ring I had found on Mallet Island. I will merely have to get used to this.”

“Then for all our sakes, let’s hope that he stays sealed in Hell forever and never gets out again. ...because that guy we saved from the Qliphoth was right. There’s a lot worse in the Underworld that had never touched Earth before, at least from what I know. Either way, you don’t want that happenin’.” Griffon tells him.

“I know, and I fully agree,” V says.

The bird nods. The area they’re going through is eerily quiet, marred only by dripping water and crumbling foundations of the heavily damaged ground above them. If there was a demon ambush big enough now, tons of debris was likely to come crashing down on their heads.

Griffon speaks up again. “...Are ya gonna keep me and Shadow around? We’re no longer bound together by the curse. Just askin’, I mean.”

V smiles. “I don’t see why not. Shadow is a loyal combat partner, and your personality makes interesting company.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment, wise guy,” Griffon huffs.

 **[[MISSION 18 BEGINS FOR V’S ROUTE]]**  
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 **As for Nero** , he remains alone— for now. He looks thoughtful yet alert as he goes on his way.

He still has a hundred questions for Dante and Vergil regarding the truth and history of their family. And Nero would get an answer to all of them.

He obviously wasn’t ready to trust Vergil yet, not now.

Yes, the man was his father. White hair and light blue eyes aside, Nero could tell just by looking at the expressions Vergil made. However, he was still an unknown to Nero, despite what Vergil had told him.

Nero winces in shock and frustration as phantom pain returns in what was left of his right arm. It did not flare up like this unless he hit the limb against something, which he had avoided doing as much as possible.

He removes his equipped Devil Breaker prosthetic, trying to focus because touching the space where his organic joint used to bend his arm was meaningless. The pain was a malfunction in his brain, as his doctor and Nico told him. There was nothing he could do except wait for it to pass.

Nero examines the metal attachment for his arm. There seems to be nothing out of the ordinary, but he cannot shake the feeling that something is internally awry. He scowls and reattaches the Devil Breaker.

**[[MISSION 18 BEGINS FOR NERO’S ROUTE]]**

** Mission 19 & 20 FINAL BOSS: Urizen **

I wrote the finale against Urizen as a 3 phase boss fight, with phase 3 being **Mission 20**.

First phase: V & his familiars fight him  
Second Phase: Dante & Vergil fight him  
Third Phase: Nero fights him

The area is cavernous and organic-looking like the rest of the Qliphoth. There is a large hole upon the ceiling in which the main branch grows down, holding the enormous Qliphoth fruit, much larger than the one V had apparently consumed in Mission 17. There are a lot of environmental hazards in all 3 phases of the boss fight as well. Urizen can lucidly control them.

His moves/attacks in the **first phase** will be as they were in the **Prologue** and **Mission 8** , and he will do some new attacks when you destroy his shield like you do in the latter. Except this time, he’s not sitting on a throne. He’s up and coming after you at all times.

In the **second phase** , Urizen fights more aggressively like he does in the canon version of Mission 17.  
…Well guess what, the story sucked badly in that edition, so I’m moving it to the second half of Mission 20, my version anyway. As mentioned before, he moves quicker and he can control parts of the Qliphoth in this area to attack you.

In the **third & final phase**, Urizen can fuse with some of the Qliphoth’s branches and leave as he chooses. His attacks are much stronger when he is fused with the Tree, and some branches are long enough for him to move, so he is not anchored to one spot. Otherwise, his fighting style is much like the second phase, with some different attacks thrown in.

**STORY:**

Dante looks over his shoulder for any sign of Nero and V. Perhaps the paths they had to take were longer. He didn’t want to assume the worst, but he was getting antsy.

Vergil’s expression is his usual glare. He remains quiet and stands still. He was likely impatient, but he kept the thought to himself.

His expression changes to slight curiosity as approaching footsteps grow closer.

A familiar voice:

“… _Earth was not, nor globes of attraction;_  
_The will of the Immortal expanded_  
_Or contracted his all-flexible senses;_  
_Death was not, but Eternal life sprung_.”

Dante sighs in annoyance. “Sheesh, V. Did you have to be so ominous arriving that way?”

V answers: “I quoted a poem that will be of important use later on.”

Vergil: “ _The Book of Urizen_ by William Blake. ...but have you seen Nero at all?”

“I haven’t. I’m certain he’s alive,” says V.

“Well, we can’t wait any longer. Who knows what Urizen has been up to since the last time I fought him? Nero will just have to keep up. …he should be fine with that, I guess,” Dante says.

He approaches V, and asked: “Any ideas on killing Urizen? How about any spells in that book of yours? I don’t mind using magic. At this point, I’ll take anything.”

V smiles. “Griffon and I were talking about my book. It contains poetry, yes, but there’s so much more to it than that.”

He held up the object. “I stole this book from Mallet Castle when I explored its ruins years ago.”

Dante winces. “Stealing a likely cursed book is not the best idea. But go on.”

Griffon swoops down near V.  
“Right?! He can’t help but examine weird cursed stuff that people shouldn’t be touchin’! That’s why Shadow & I are still hangin’ out with this putz so he doesn’t hurt himself again!”

“…Before one of us delivers the killing blow to Urizen, using this—” V gestures with his cane. “A temporary portal to the Underworld itself must be established beneath him.”

“I can handle doing both tasks,” Vergil says brusquely.

“However..." The 2 familiars and the twins looked at V. “This book can give a demon power, and it can also take a demon’s power away if one follows a few rules. Do you understand?”

“Sure do. Which verses and which poems do we need to read?” Dante says.

V shows them the pages.  
“It is The Book of Urizen, and we must read certain verses aloud in a particular order. The first verse of chapter 9, the first verse of chapter 8… the first _two_ verses of chapter 3— and the first two verses of chapter 1.”

He brandishes his cane.  
“Then stab him through his heart. Used in the proper rituals, this is an indispensable banishing tool. If he’s injured enough, Urizen will either die, or he will be sealed in a certain facet of The Underworld’s reality forever— unless someone is depraved enough to summon him again.”

“Then let’s learn these verses and get this over with. I’m getting sick of running around in this demonic plant,” Dante says, an edge to his remark.

 **FULL POEM HERE: https://www.bartleby.com/235/259.html**  
\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

**[INT. SCENE: Urizen’s final boss fight lair, looking as I described a few paragraphs above; see MISSION 19 & 20]**

Urizen stands tall and still covered in pulsing tree vines, his body blocking the large branch descending from the roof of the cavern.

“You are all so desperate to die at my hands that you keep returning. …The fourth man is not dead. I would have sensed it. When he arrives to fight me, he will be killed with the rest of you,” he says.

“Sure about that, are ya? Nero seriously hates you, and he’s been waiting to kick your ass all day. The same goes for the rest of us,” Dante retorts, drawing the Ivory handgun.

Urizen does not respond at first; he slowly moves several meters away, so the fully formed Qliphoth Fruit can be seen. It is pulsing crimson as the demon removes it from the branch.

“It took two millennia and thousands of corpses to create this. Not a single one of you can begin fathom its power.”

Dante, V, and Griffon stare in shock. How could there be a second Fruit?!

“But I thought that V had eaten the Qliphoth Fruit earlier. I saw him do it!” Dante exclaims.

Vergil glares at Dante in anger and disbelief. “I knew there was something you were not telling me. …Why would you even let him do that?!” he demands.

Urizen gestures at the branches. “You thought that was the Fruit itself? No. That was merely one seed of several fragments. This which I am about to consume, is the full Qliphoth Fruit.”

Dante draws both pistols and fires in an attempt to destroy the Fruit, but Urizen blocks the bullets with his arm.

“I cannot be destroyed or hindered by conventional means. My power is beyond that of human limitations and their inventions,” he says.

Urizen bites into the Fruit at last, sinking his fangs into it and tearing off a large piece.

Dante winces at the sight. “God this is seriously gonna suck…! Um, OK, we need a Plan B and fast,” he says.

He looks over his shoulder, however—

“Wh—? …Where’s V?” he yells, surprised.

“No idea. Figure out later,” Vergil growls, ready to charge forward and attack.

Urizen finishes eating quickly, growling in irritation when he sees the twins’ battle stances.

“I see that you’re ready to die now. But what has happened to the third fool?” Urizen’s eyes, many of them now visible & open under the vines, narrowed as he moved his head.

V swiftly attacks Urizen in his devil form, followed by Griffon and Shadow. They had hid behind one of the twisted vine pillars in this area. Urizen roars in rage and pain from the attack as he staggers slightly.

“Whoa, nice! Kick his ass, V!” Dante cheers.

“Nobody can afford cheerleaders today!” Griffon swoops in front of the twins, gesturing at Vergil first.

“You! Do something useful with that sword and cut open a Hell gateway! It won’t work yet, but it’ll stay there! I’ll read the first verse of the ninth chapter! Dante, go help Shadow and V!” the demon bird yells.

“On it!” Dante rushes ahead toward the fight.

**[PHASE 1 BEGINS, SEE ABOVE FOR HOW URIZEN ATTACKS THE CHARACTERS— Dante & Vergil can be called in for support attacks]**

Vergil runs to the middle of the area beneath where the fruit had grown. His gaze briefly shifts toward the ongoing fight before he unsheathes Yamato and plunges it into the ground. There is a small but strong flash of blue light from the entry point, but it melts and changes into a fairly wide (20-foot-diameter) circle of symbols.

When you (V) get Urizen’s health bar nearly halfway down through **PHASE 1** of the boss fight, Griffon will read a verse of the poem:

_“Then the Inhabitants of those Cities_  
_Felt their Nerves change into Marrow,_  
_And hardening Bones began_  
_In swift diseases and torments,_  
_In throbbings and shootings and grindings,_  
_Thro’ all the coasts; till weaken’d_  
_The Senses inward rush’d, shrinking_  
_Beneath the dark net of infection”_

Urizen stops in his tracks.

“...How did you learn this?” he asks, trying to hide his surprise and worry.

“This poem is public domain, dumbass! Didn’t think of that, did ya?” Griffon snapped, taunting the demon with the book in his talons.

Urizen snarls, waving a tree vine at the bird as an attack. Griffon narrowly dodges it, keeping the book in his grip.

“V, hurry _**up** _with this creep already!” he yells.

V, back in human form, dodges an attack from Urizen as the latter starts attacking quicker.

Urizen says: “I will admit this, sorcerer: you are clever for bringing that accursed book into my domain.”

V dodges a barrage of attacks from Urizen; the spell didn’t seem to slow him down yet.

Urizen continues talking: “And you had turned yourself into a devil by consuming a piece of the Qliphoth Fruit…”

He moves closer, charging for another attack. Shadow and Griffon attack Urizen at once, but the devil keeps going, furious and determined.

V rushes behind a vine pillar for cover. There, he loudly and clearly recites the second verse that’s needed for the spell.

“ _Urizen explor’d his dens_  
_Mountain, moor, and wilderness,_  
_With a globe of fire lighting his journey—_  
_A fearful journey, annoy’d_  
_By cruel enormities, forms_  
_Of life on his forsaken mountains_.”

“Do you believe that this poetry can deter me?!” Urizen snarls, ripping the pillar from its foundations to reveal V’s cover.

“You afraid that it’ll actually work? You should be!” Griffon retorts, chuckling.

Urizen’s eyes narrowed at the bird before he attacked with several vines fused to his body. However, he is stopped by V, who has returned to his Devil Trigger form. The latter is furious at Urizen for trying to hurt Griffon. V tears the two vine clusters from Urizen’s body, leaving them to writhe upon the ground.

Urizen attempts to push V off of him as the latter mercilessly slams him into the wall, reminiscent of Nightmare, who is part of him now.

“Without your book, the familiars, and the fragment of the Qliphoth Fruit, you would have died within minutes of meeting me,” Urizen taunts.

“Like them,” Urizen gestures toward Dante and Vergil, “Your hubris has led you to confront something you cannot hope to understand nor defeat. “Other people throughout the millennia have tried, but they still failed due to their weak, limited human origins.”

Dante steps up and says: “Well, maybe they didn’t have help at the time.”

Vergil glances at Dante, then at Urizen before he tightens his grip on Yamato’s hilt.

Urizen tosses V aside, and the latter is caught by Griffon as he returns to human form. V lands on the ground, leaning on his cane to keep standing.

V grabs the hem of Vergil’s coat as the twin walks by.

“Mind the verses that you must recite,” he pleads. It’s clear that he is exhausted from the fight.

Vergil maintains eye contact with him for a few seconds before he nods in understanding.

**[PHASE TWO BEGINS, and Urizen fights more aggressively like the way he does in the canon version of Mission 17. But here, you have more versatility with Dante’s weapons and Vergil as a support ally. Don’t worry; the AI controlling Vergil can take care of himself. Dante has his Sin DT and it’s activated like it normally is. Vergil has his regular DT… for now.]**

When you get Urizen’s health bar about half-way down in this phase, Vergil will recite the next verse of the poem for the ritual:

“ _The voice ended: they saw his pale visage_  
_Emerge from the darkness, his hand_  
_On the rock of Eternity unclasping_  
_The Book of brass. Rage seiz’d the strong_ —”

Urizen is getting furious at this point, and you can tell. His attacks get worse, doing more damage if they hit you. Consider it a bit higher than the game difficulty you would be currently playing on.

When Urizen’s health bar is almost gone, Vergil charges in to attack him with Yamato as Dante recites the following verse:

“ _Rage, fury, intense indignation,_  
_In cataracts of fire, blood, and gall,_  
_In whirlwinds of sulphurous smoke,_  
_And enormous forms of energy,_  
_In living creations appear’d,_  
_In the flames of eternal fury_.”

However, Urizen is stubbornly quick despite the beating he’s taken so far, and he roughly grabs Vergil’s body with one mutated hand. Vergil struggles, attempting to revert to his Devil Trigger form, but to no avail.

Dante is horrified and keeps attacking Urizen with his guns, but it does not seem to have an effect.

“V! Why isn’t it working?!” he yells.

V looks back at Dante, then at Vergil with a similar expression, before tossing his cane at the devil hunter.

“You’ll need this,” V says, but his voice is fearful.

Urizen clenches his other hand over Vergil’s face, showing him a harrowing series of flashbacks from the worst times of his life:  
(the raid of his childhood home, Eva’s murder, hunted by demons as a child, fighting Dante several times, literal Hell, a decade of Mundus’ torture as Nelo Angelo, seeing Dante on Mallet Island, more suffering in Hell, facing Urizen for the first time in a weak state, and being trapped in the Qliphoth for a month alone with his worst memories & nightmares)

**Here, I was inspired by the “Hell” scene from Event Horizon and the creepy twitching heads in Jacob’s Ladder— both are horror classics:**  
**https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giiuqTdBSTc**  
**https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGc6rW5_fj8**

You (the audience) can hear Vergil’s panicked screaming over the flashbacks.

When Urizen removes his hand, there is blatant evidence of tears on Vergil’s face and in his eyes. His teeth are gritted from the strain of trying to escape, anger, and shock as he continues to struggle in Urizen’s grip.

Urizen grins.

“ _He sees you_ with his three crimson eyes… even now. He longs for the day you are foolish enough to come and bait him again.”

Vergil’s expression is rife with terror as he continues to struggle. You can almost hear him whispering “ _No… don’t do this to me…_ ” as he tries to wrench himself from Urizen’s cruel grasp.

He is afraid.

“You are so weak,” Urizen growls.

A horrid scream pierces the air as Vergil’s right arm is torn off at the shoulder.

Vergil is roughly tossed back on the ground, catatonia evident in his facial expression and his body. The arm, and Yamato, fall about 10 meters away from him.

Dante stares at Urizen with cold hatred, his expression genuinely furious.

“I swear that I’ll kill you for this!” he shouts, enraged.

“You have fought me twice, and you lost. So has he. What makes you believe that the third time will be any different?” Urizen challenges.

“I was missing a few things last time,” Dante mutters defiantly.

He grabs Yamato, sheathing the sword before carefully securing it to the left side of his belt.

He looks over at V, who is treating what’s left of Vergil’s arm. The former had stopped the worst of the bleeding, anyway. Vergil’s coat had been removed, and the arm seems to be regenerating rather slowly.

“V, I hope you don’t mind if I hang on to your cane for the time being. You guys can protect yourselves without it, right?” Dante says.

V nods. “Do what you have to.”

**[[Dante continues PHASE 2 of the boss fight to its conclusion.]]**

**At this point, I would encourage using the Sin DT to attack Urizen during this part, because there is one more mission left in which Nero fights him. Like why not use that?**

Dante uses Yamato to slash at Urizen’s lower torso. It produces a deep cut, leaking thick black ichor from the wound. The devil staggers backwards slightly, falling to one knee as he struggles to keep himself steady and upright.

Dante draws his shotgun and shoots Urizen several times in the chest. He knows it won’t kill the devil yet, but he wanted to make Urizen hurt for maiming Vergil.

He grimaces at the noises Urizen’s body makes as the slugs produce their entry wounds.

Dante quickly gets into a defensive stance with his sword as Urizen lashes out with one arm.

He plunges the sword straight into Urizen’s hand and into the ground, causing him to snarl in surprise.

“You did a lot worse to my brother, so shut up and just wait,” he states coldly, continuing to glare.

Dante inhales and recites the next verse:

“ _…Lo, a Shadow of horror is risen_  
_In Eternity! Unknown, unprolific,_  
_Self-clos’d, all-repelling. What Demon_  
_Hath form’d this abominable Void_  
_This soul-shudd’ring Vacuum? Some said_  
_It is Urizen_.”

He spoke at a normal volume, but that was enough to have an effect.

Urizen roars in pain as various cuts crack open on his body and the spell circle produced by Yamato starts glowing brighter.

“One more verse and this will finally be finished,” Dante says.

“I can’t believe this crazy spell thing would actually work!” Griffon yells, half-surprised and half-amused.

Vergil stirs slightly from the effect of Yamato’s power, straining himself to get into a sitting position.

“…he’s still alive,” he mumbles, glaring at Urizen.

“Not for long,” V assures him.

Vergil stares back before touching what’s left of his arm.

“I can’t just sit & wait for Dante to kill him,” he says.

“Urizen nearly _killed you_. Why are you gonna risk letting him do that again?” Griffon scoffs.

“Dante is taking too long. I don’t know what he’s playing at,” Vergil replies.

“I dunno either, _genius_! Fighting a devil like Urizen could be a tad difficult, but what do I know?!” Griffon exclaims.

Vergil gets to his feet with difficulty, using his remaining hand to steady himself against one of the vine pillars. A strange object lands next to his feet.

“Is that another one of the—” V starts.

Vergil picks up the Qliphoth seed and examines it. “The best case scenario is that this will heal me. If not, what worse can it do?” he says.

“It could always do worse. Do not ignore that possibility. Consuming a Qliphoth nearly drove me to madness,” V warns.

Vergil ignores him, making his way toward Dante and Urizen. “It shouldn’t matter. I was not born fully human,” he says.

Vergil consumes it, gaining his Sin Devil Trigger Form. He rushes toward Urizen, attacking the demon without hesitation.

Despite Vergil’s attacks, Urizen does not move far from the spot where he’s impaled by one hand.

But he does manage to wrench his hand free from the ground, smashing into Dante and knocking Yamato from his grip.

“…Oh shit!” Dante gasps, watching the sword sail through the air.

 **[end of mission 19— oh god the suspense!]**  
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

** MISSION 20: THE RETURN **

**As this is going on—**

Nero finds a working phone & speaks to Kyrie. Their dialogue is very similar to what they said in the canon scene. Maybe there are a few more lines.

After he’s finished talking, he hears that the final battle already started & he fears that they will die.

Nero rushes towards the fight, and his dialogue is like what he says in the canon version of this scene.

His right arm grows back fully & Nero finally transforms into his full Devil Trigger.

Meanwhile, Urizen is still fighting Dante, Vergil, V, Griffon, and Shadow.

In the last scene these characters were seen together, Urizen knocked Yamato from Dante’s hand, and none of the on-screen characters could catch it in time.

However—

Nero catches Yamato in his newly regrown right arm.

He bares his teeth, pointing the blade at Urizen.

“This ends. … _Right here_ ,” Nero growls.

The others stare at him.

“…What kind of power is this?” Vergil asks aloud, not really expecting anyone to answer.

V is quiet at first before recovering his cane. He tosses it to Nero. “You’ll need this. Don’t drop it,” he says.

“You don’t need to worry about that,” Nero tells him. His organic wings unfurl behind his back over his spectral pair. He clutches the cane in one claw of his wing.

“Nero, you’re… definitely full of surprises, aren’t you?” Dante says, only half in jest.

“I can live with that. Let’s see if it’s enough to kill this demon already,” Nero says.

“You’re not human. That is surprising,” Urizen remarks.  
“But it does not matter. Humans or devils, all who dare raise their weapons against me will suffer a painful death,” he says.

Nero narrows his eyes as he looks at Urizen again. “I’ll give you the same warning,” he growls back.

**[PHASE 3 of the boss fight starts]**

Urizen fuses with some of the Qliphoth’s branches in order to gain some lost power, but Nero quickly tears him away.

“That’s not gonna work with me!” Nero says, clenching his right fist.

Urizen lunged to attack Nero again, roaring as he swung for the head with a discarded Qliphoth branch (read: about the size of a normal tree).

Nero effortlessly caught the branch and he roared back, slamming Urizen into the ground with his spectral Devil Bringer.

Urizen seems to melt into the ground, escaping Nero’s grasp. He appears back on the surface, fused with the Qliphoth again. He is larger and more eldritch-looking now, and he’s faster.

His attacks are stronger when he is fused with the tree, and some branches are long enough for him to move, so he is not anchored to one spot. Otherwise, his fighting style is much like the second phase, with some different attacks thrown in.

Nero is not intimidated, so he continues to fight. There is gratuitous use of Yamato and Nero’s literal devil arms for his attacks here.

**(By that, I mean that you, the player, continue to fight until Urizen’s health bar is almost completely gone. I was somewhat inspired by Marguerite and Lucas’ respective boss fights in Resident Evil 7 and its “Not A Hero” epilogue story.)**

**CUT** to a small scene of V writing on a sheet of paper. Once he finishes, Griffon carefully takes the folded page in his claw, attacking any roving Qliphoth vines as he flies closer to Nero. The latter has Urizen pinned to the ground inside Yamato’s Circle. The larger devil is impaled through the stomach by Red Queen’s blade. Urizen still puts up a fight to escape, defiant to the end.

“Read this verse, and then stab him right in the heart with V’s cane! We should be good to go after you do that!” Griffon says.

Nero looked at the page in Griffon’s talons, and gripped V’s cane in his right hand.

Urizen started thrashing this time, nearly throwing Nero off balance, but he slammed Urizen’s head into the ground and held it there with his left hand.

Nero bared his teeth. “I’m surprised that you don’t wanna listen to the last words you will ever hear,” he snarls.

“ _Times on times he divided, and measured_  
_Space by space in his ninefold darkness,_  
_Unseen, unknown; changes appeared_  
_Like desolate mountains, rifted furious_  
_By the black winds of perturbation_.”

Nero thrust the cane into Urizen’s chest nearly to the hilt, and the latter did not make a sound in response. At last, the completed ritual and the beating he received was finally killing him.

The Circle begins crackling with electricity, flaring with brighter light as Urizen attempts to reach for Nero’s neck one last time. His arm falls, and Urizen finally goes still as his corpse starts calcifying.

Taking the hint, Nero rushed out of the Circle’s boundary, reverting back to his human form.

He doesn’t speak at first, solemnly returning V’s cane and Yamato to Vergil.

For a second, Nero looks at his regenerated right arm with intrigue.

Dante walks up to him, putting a hand on his shoulder in congratulations.

“Hey, don’t be so surprised about your arm growing back, of all things! That’s still good, I mean. But you turned into a devil and you just beat the crap out of Urizen after he tried outright fusing into Qliphoth. You didn’t bat an eye fighting him. …The rest of us are still pretty rattled ourselves.” Dante trails off after this last sentence, looking apprehensive. He really did look tired.

“I heard the fight happening. I was afraid that you were going to die,” Nero says quietly.

“Yeah… me too,” Dante admits, no humor in his tone.

They look at Vergil for a minute. The latter realizes that Nero literally heard what Urizen had done.

“And we’re not finished yet,” Vergil says grimly.

This remark surprises Nero and Dante slightly.

“How? What else do we have to do?” Nero asks.

V explains: “The Qliphoth trunk and its roots must be severed in the Underworld, and Yamato is the only devil arm capable of cutting them.”

Vergil nods before he turns around, preparing to cut open a portal.

Dante stops him, grabbing the back of his vest. “Vergil, wait. Listen.”

Vergil looks back at him with a hard stare.

“Don’t even start. Leave this to me. I know what I have to do. It shouldn’t take that long,” he says; the grit in his voice was apparent.

Dante is quiet for a few seconds, staring at his twin with concern as he thought of what else to say.  
“Urizen nearly _tore you apart_. I know you believe that you’re much stronger after eating that piece of the Qliphoth Fruit afterward— but that still doesn’t matter. You’ve been stuck in Hell for twenty-five years, and you’ve been trapped in the Qliphoth for a month. The only reason Urizen had let you live was because he wanted to use your abilities. If he didn’t, you’d be dead now, no coming back from it. So what if you’re not so lucky this time? ...Please, you can’t go alone after what happened today.”

A flicker of surprise crossed Vergil’s face for a second, before he returned to glaring. “I appreciate your concern for me, Dante, but it will have to wait until I finish this.”

“So what?!” Dante asks, annoyed.

Vergil walks past him, slowly, deliberately, and cuts open a second portal with Yamato.

He nods to Nero and V before facing Dante again.

“This should get you back to the streets of Redgrave. Hordes of demons are still outside this tree and throughout the city; you’ll have to fight your way out. Now go.” Vergil orders.

“You can’t leave us like this,” Dante insists.

“Well, I prefer not to keep waiting while the Qliphoth is still up. ...See you around,” Vergil says.

Before Dante can say anything else, Vergil quickly shoves him in the chest, knocking him into the portal back to the city.  
\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

**[CUT to the streets of Redgrave City, night.]**

Dante, Nero, V, and Griffon have appeared several blocks away from the Qliphoth.

Dante stands up straight again, frustration evident in his expression and body language as he glares back at the Tree.

“Damn it… I should’ve expected him to pull a fast one on us. I thought I was used to that,” he said in a resigned tone.

Nero looks at him with slight sympathy. As the audience knows, he’s unaware of the history between his 2 surviving relatives.

“I’m sorry he left like that, Dante.”

Dante frowns. “I should’ve gone with him.”

NERO: “…He’ll make it back, though, right?”

DANTE: “I’m really not sure. If Vergil’s intentions are to seal the portal that the Qliphoth broke through while he’s in the Underworld, I don’t know how he’ll be able to return. When I fought a demon on Dumary Island at least 10 years ago, I ended up stuck in Hell for over a year.”

“Does he know of any other hell gates in the area? Their size or type does not matter,” V questions.

Dante shakes his head, still looking frustrated & resigned. “He didn’t say. I don’t know, either.”

“We’ll figure how to get Vergil back out eventually. There’s always a way to summon demons, or reopen a way to Hell, unfortunately,” Nero says.

He looked around for any phone booths, but found none.

“We need to meet with Nico and get out of here. Kill anything that tries to stop us,” Nero tells them.

Dante checks some of his weapons. “At least that’s not hard to figure out.”

Nero, asking either V or Dante: “Do either of you have a phone or a portable 2 way radio with you? …no? Come on. We have to find a working phone.”

They start walking. The sky grows darker, and there are no lights on, in streetlamps or in the damaged buildings.

After a few minutes, they find a phone in the back of a small office building.

Nero makes the call. “Nico, it’s us. Yes, we’re all alive. Good to know you 3 are, too. We have a lot to tell you. The address we’re at is…”

 **[CUT]** to about ten minutes later when they hear the van approaching.

Nico opens the main door. “Took you guys long enough to call! Y’all OK?” she greets.

Nero answers: “Good to see you, too. …Urizen is dead. V told us of a ritual that we could do to stop him.”

Nico nods in understanding, but she frowns as she looks at the Qliphoth in the distance. “Is there any way we can stop it?”

NERO: “Yes. It’ll take a few days. We’ll tell you when we’re out of the city.”

“All right, come on.” Nico stands aside so they can board the van.

Nico notices Nero’s new right arm, and smiled. “OK, you’ve _seriously_ gotta tell me how it grew back so fast! I wish I coulda filmed that!”

Nero gives a wan smile. “Yeah, sure. It’s a story, all right.”

Trish and Lady are sitting on the main seat across from the juke box.

LADY: “Hey, Dante. You still have my 2 rocket launchers? We’re likely gonna need them to escape the city.”

Dante nods, carefully placing them on the floor. “Yeah, yeah. I swear there’s nothing damaged with either of them.”

She smiles a bit as she checks the configurations for both launchers, then frowns as she looks up at Dante again.

“…What’s wrong?” Lady asks.

“Yeah, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. What happened while you guys were gone?” Trish says.

Dante sighs dejectedly, putting a hand to his forehead. “Like I’ve seen a ghost, that’s a good way of putting it.”

His tone is quiet. “We found Vergil in the trunk of the Qliphoth. Urizen was using his blood as a conduit of sorts to amplify his own power, like he did to me before V found me in the cemetery.”

LADY: “He didn’t try killing you again, did he?”

DANTE: “Thankfully, no. We swiftly had to bury the hatchet, considering I saved his ass and we had to kill an incredibly powerful demon. …But he got angry at me because I didn’t want him to go to the Underworld alone to sever the Qliphoth’s trunk. He got wounded badly when he fought Urizen.”

“I suppose after taking Yamato back yet again, he doesn’t want anyone else using it,” Trish remarks.

Dante scoffs slightly. “Maybe. Still, what if he’s unable to get back out this time?”

The van lurches into Drive as the headlights flicker back on.

“Stay sharp, people! I tried to map the safest route, but we’re still gonna have to go by some demon-infested areas. The rest of you, ready your weapons and check the windows! Nero has the passenger seat,” Nico says as she adjusts the side mirror.

“Gotcha,” Dante replies, getting the shotgun ready. “V, Trish, do you mind using the spares just in case?”

The van speeds down the street, and the moving shadows crossing the corner of the headlights show that they aren’t alone on the road.

“It’s too bad we didn’t bring the Pandora weapon and this van doesn’t half a window on the roof,” Trish says, squinting out the window slot in the door.

Lady smiles knowingly. “But we still have rocket launchers. Give me that safety harness on that shelf and hook it to the wall handle near the door.”

She strapped herself in, standing firmly as she opened the side door.

“Hand me the launcher when I hold my arm out,” Lady says, readying a small submachine gun.

A few shapes appear on the road, too large to be human. She fires in short controlled bursts as the demons lunged toward the van.

**[CUE a <5 minute scene of the characters battling their way out of Redgrave City as demons attack the van. It’s not playable.]**

“Finally I get to use this! Swerve after I fire at it!” Lady exclaims, aiming for a behemoth demon’s head.

*BANG!*

The van turned a sharp left to avoid the charred corpse.

“I didn’t intend on a shortcut! Sometimes they’re not worth it!” Nico exclaims, angrily rolling up her window as the van barrels down an alleyway.

“Slow down, then!” Nero says.

“Can’t! I actually have to speed up for this! Look ahead!” Nico grips both hands on the steering wheel.

Dante leans between the driver’s seat and passenger’s seat. “What, are we gonna play bowling with 10 demons and a car? I thought— Oh, jeez, I see it.”

The bridge is out, and the only way down to the next road is the rooftop of a torn off building in front of the gap.

**[EXT. SHOT of the van jumping the chasm between the ruined buildings. Almost all the characters are yelling except Dante & Griffon, who are cheering]**

**ENDING SCENES**

_**5 DAYS LATER: June 20th, 2:34 P.M.** _

[EXT. SHOT of the hotel from Mission 2. It has been fortified as a temporary safe zone for the DMC group as they hunt down any surviving demons]

Dante, Lady, and Nico are sitting at a few tables in the lobby, their weapons and a bunch of paperwork spread on the surfaces of each one or a couple chairs. There is a Police/Fire/EMS scanner radio on each table as well, each one on a different channel to pick up new information. The other characters are out hunting demons.

Nico looks at Dante as she sits down across from him.  
“So you revive this guy, your brother… y’all go to fight Urizen, but soon after Nero kills him, Vergil forces you guys to leave before he goes to cut down the Qliphoth. Why would he be so gung-ho to volunteer returning to the Underworld after being stuck there for— you said 25 years?”

“Pretty much,” Dante says, not looking up at her as he writes down some notes.

“Did he bail out on you a lot? …Sorry if I’m bein’ rude, I’m just trying to figure out the how and the why of this,” Nico continues.

“He didn’t actually ‘bail out’ on me this time. He didn’t want me coming with him. I guess he resents that I’m still skeptical of his motives,” Dante explains, looking up at her.

“To be fair, that’s not a bad guess with Vergil. …I mean, it’s not your fault, Dante, I understand. I met the guy 25 years ago,” Lady says.

Dante shrugs. “I wanted to keep an eye on him, but he wasn’t havin’ it. If he comes back, it’s gonna be hard to trust each other.”

He returned to writing. The stressed out look on his face indicates that he’s trying to distract himself from thinking about the subject.

Nico frowns sympathetically before she hears the phone ringing. She runs over to the van to answer.

It’s Nero. “Trish and I have destroyed the demon hive in the subway tunnels. We also met up with V and Griffon. They’re going after the one starting at the corner of 15th and Durleth. We’re heading back now.”

**[CUT to scene in which Nero & Trish return]**

“How did the arm gauntlet work?” Nico asks him excitedly.

“Even better than the Breakers did. It didn’t even get damaged,” Nero says.

Nico sits down and quickly writes something.  
“I was happy that you’re still able to use these after your arm grew back. And- well, four extra if you count those odd claw-hands on your wingtips. It’s so fascinating seeing demon anatomy work that way, after examining your devil form. I haven’t seen something like this in any of the demons I observed so far.”

Dante and Lady laugh a bit at Nico’s enthusiasm; Nero rolls his eyes.

“Still, I prefer that you be careful with this. It’s a working prototype and I only have two of ‘em. Sure, I’m likely able to make _a hell of a lotta money_ designing prosthetics for any survivors who have lost limbs in this city, but the deal’s still tentative,” Nico says.

All 3 radios started blaring an emergency broadcast tone.

“ _We have an emergency in the containment zone. It’s an earthquake. All units, stay clear. Repeat: An emergency in the containment zone. It’s an earthquake. Readings on the Richter scale are reaching 6.5 at the epicenter and climbing_.”

“Sounds like Vergil did what he said he’d do,” Nero says, looking out one of the windows that faced the Qliphoth.

It was a horrific sight, with the immense tree swaying ominously in the distance. The sheer size of it compared to the rest of the city was jarring, and enormous boughs the length and width of freight trains fell to the ground, adding to the pandemonium.

V rushes in, eyes wide before he slams the main doors closed. “The remaining demons seem to have gone utterly mad as we got closer to the Qliphoth. I’m relieved that we returned in time.”

“You guys went near it alone?! Seriously?!” Nero demands, irritated at V’s recklessness.

“I had wanted to take one more look before the ground started shaking,” V says.

DANTE: “Yeah, we all can feel it. Crawl under the tables and stay there!”

At this point, the ground was convulsing violently from the quake’s damage. It lasts for about 30 seconds, but it’s tense.

[ **EXT. shot** of the Qliphoth slowing sinking into the ground, its upper boughs rotting off the trunk and violently crashing. The roots are twitching spasmodically before they shrivel and rot. At long last, it’s gone.]

“Damn... did any of you guys feel that infernal racket?” Griffon asks, trying to make light of it as he walks out from under a large chair.

“The worst of it’s definitely over. Mind your heads, though,” Dante says, standing back up.

Griffon flies over to one of the windows. “Ahh, nice to see that giant eyesore has finally been wiped off the map,” he remarks.

A familiar voice: “ _I meant it when I said that it wouldn’t take me long_.”

It’s Vergil. He’s standing on the second floor of the lobby, observing the group. He looks tired and slightly beat-up, but he’s not badly wounded.

“Oh, it’s you. It’s been a couple days,” Nero says, loud and purposeful enough for Dante to hear him, although he heard Vergil anyway.

Dante stares at his brother. “Yeah, feels longer than that. How did you find us? And how were you able to escape this time?”

“I followed him.” Vergil points at V.

Dante walks closer, frowning. “I won’t mince words; you look terrible. What happened down there?”

“I understand you want to keep asking questions. After I attacked Nero to take Yamato, I created a new unsealed gateway to reach Urizen before the Qliphoth broke through the human world. When I severed the tree’s roots, I had to return to that particular portal and reopen it in time. The demons who saw me cutting down the Qliphoth attempted to stop me from going back,” Vergil explains.

A scraping noise is heard from the other side of the barricaded lobby doors, followed by snarling.

“Well, despite our differences, I’m just relieved you’re back and we’re not tryin’ to kill each other. But those demons outside certainly aren’t. Apparently some of ‘em followed you here, too. …Eh, so it goes,” Dante says. He picks up his word and walks toward one of the windows to get a look.

“You can stay here. I’ll deal with them,” Nero says, grabbing Red Queen and making his way to the second floor. There’s a low hanging fire-escape he could climb off to get the drop on the demons swarming the street outside the hotel’s main entrance on the other side.

He approaches the second-floor balcony where the escape is, and turns around to climb down.

Nero sees Vergil standing a few meters away from him, Yamato sheathed and in his left hand.

“Damn, you’re quiet. What is it?” Nero asks.

“I saw at least 30 of them, thought I’d help you,” Vergil replies.

Nero raises his eyebrows slightly at the remark.

“All right, come on. Don’t take all the fun from me, though, got it?” he says.

Nero and Vergil land on the ground, approaching the horde of demons slowly before rushing at them with swords drawn.

**[ROLL CREDITS]**

**POST-CREDITS SCENE**

**_June 27th, 8:19 P.M._ **

Vergil stares at the sign above the front doors as he walks up to the building.

[ _low angle perspective shot of him walking forward, facing the camera/audience before looking upward_ ]

“Devil May Cry... why did you call it that?” he asks curiously.

Dante answers: “You’ll know soon enough. I have a lot to tell you about.”

**FINAL SHOT:**

It’s a close-up of Dante’s office phone ringing. A hand reaches out and answers.

Vergil speaks. “Devil May Cry.”  
\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

**That’s how I would have done the story, anyway.**

**This took much longer than I had expected, but I’m satisfied with it.**

**At least I can say that it’s much better than the crap that Capcom hacked up in our faces.**

…Why couldn’t the final scene have been Dante and Vergil walking up to the Devil May Cry building together instead of wasting their lives fighting each other in Hell for a month like idiots?! That’s not even “living”. What a garbage ending.

Could the Yamato sword even open a way back this time?

What’s that thing with “fridging” a female character some people refer to? Because that’s the feeling I’m getting about what these stupid writers want to do with Dante & Vergil.

Dante even says aloud: “Sometimes I think this will never end.”

Of course it won’t, and I mean that in a bad way. He does not even bother trying to end his stupid feud with Vergil, which I expected him to TRY.

These godawful writers want to just shove Dante & Vergil in Hell forever after literally 10 years without a sequel to DMC4.

And there are people who claim that canon is a good ending?! Are they braindead?

** MISCELLANEOUS GRIEVANCES & CONCLUSION **

It seriously sucks that Trish & Lady were taken captive by Urizen early on and ending up as disguised boss fights. Screw the writers for wasting their roles, too.

When I saw them talking in the trailers, I had hopes for them to kick some demon ass in this game. They didn’t in DMC4 (except for a small intro scene in the “special edition” AKA glorified DLC). And I had found the original Kalina Ann weapon in my first play-through like many other people likely did.

Instead of him being the (unoriginal) main villain again like he was in 5, imagine how interesting it would’ve been if there was a short DMC3 prequel in which you played as Vergil and the players got to learn more about him. Like his time in Fortuna and how he met Nero’s mother, for example.

…Nah, we’re never gonna get anything like that, though. We didn’t even get a chapter about Vergil in the “Before the Nightmare” prequel book to DMC5, which won’t be published in English anyway.

That book apparently has about 260 pages (Japanese) and Capcom refused to even bother writing about Vergil’s time in Fortuna before Nero was born. From Vergil’s dialogue in the DMC5 game, he did not even know that he even had a son.

-What did he do there?  
-How long was he there for?  
-Did The Order find out he was there?  
-What was Vergil’s partner like?  
-What was her name?  
-How did they meet?  
-Was she a devil, a hybrid, or a human?  
-Was he there when she died, or was killed?

It would have been SO interesting if Nero’s mother had been a full-blooded devil or a hybrid, but sadly the dumbass writers never bothered with her.

If Itsuno or whoever liked Vergil & V as much as he claimed to, then he & the other devs would not have wasted V’s character as a gimmick and he in part would have actually made an effort into giving “regular Vergil” a real story arc instead of the following lazy, useless excuse:

“ _He hasn’t learned to be a better person in literally 25 years, so we are just gonna make him the villain again like he was in DMC3_.”

It was already obvious that the new villain Urizen would eventually be killed or returned to the Underworld regardless of who he was. But he could have been an interesting, powerful villain in his own right if the writers had not gone for a weak cop-out and just said:  
“ _Meh, let’s just make him Vergil’s devil side incarnate and call it a day_.”

We could have had a semi-Lovecraftian villain, a truly terrifying & maddening monster, with a matching army of horrific demons that we can kill in this remarkable well-made RE engine. Capcom seemed to give us that with the designs for many demons and bosses.

As the game release date drew closer, I was very excited that they would actually raise the bar on storytelling. The trailers made it look as if that would be true.

We **almost** got that. **We could have had it**. …But no, it was just Vergil doing stupid shit again.

I should have remembered that trailers can and will lie to the audience.

If I were to describe DMC5’s story as a food: I had expected a steak from a Manhattan steakhouse (and 70 bucks is literally what I & most people had paid for, a video game or a steak from some ritzy place). ...Instead, we got 3 measly single burgers from a fast food joint that have been sitting in some jerk’s car for 4 days.

I hate what the writers and Itsuno did to this story so much. They took something that could have been interesting and shit all over it. The trailers (never trust those) made the story seem as if it was going to be 10x better than what it actually was (garbage).

Could they have proven us wrong by writing a better script?

 **Of course not** , because they did not bother with that!

If this script was actually **_good_** , I would not have bothered writing this at all.

The gameplay exceeded my expectations, but the narrative certainly didn’t.

I learned my lesson. I’ll keep my expectations low and downgrade accordingly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Read the full poem The Book of Urizen here: https://www.bartleby.com/235/259.html
> 
> Vergil's backstory on Fortuna was so difficult for me to write, and I really had to focus on not overshooting it by making it too long. I kept rewriting, tweaking, adding new draft bits, deleting, editing… writing & rewriting some more.
> 
> And so it goes.
> 
> Geography-wise, I think I might have dropped Fortuna into the part of the Gulf near the Florida Keys, when it’s *probably* near Italy or something like that. …Oops. Uhh, maybe you should ignore that bit.
> 
> Wanna know something else about that part of my “fix it” story here?
> 
> When I am profoundly sad & on the verge of tears in person, I turn my head away so the person I’m speaking with doesn’t see that I’m about to cry.
> 
> I wrote that as a gesture Vergil used in the script twice, because I thought that would be more interesting for a character like him to do instead of keep talking. I really thought that it suited him.
> 
> There’s a line of dialogue in which Dante mentions being stuck in Hell after the events of DMC2. This is also referenced in the “Before the Nightmare” book translation summary I had read back in March.
> 
> I forget how long he was stuck there, so I wrote “over a year.” If I’m wrong, the fault is mine.
> 
> I had initially wanted Vergil to use a Ragtime Devil Breaker in order to open & close one of the portals to the Underworld after he cut down the Qliphoth— but in the final draft, I don’t see how that would have fit. Oh, well.
> 
> As I said before, I had no choice to write this thing in general.  
> I can’t abide by letting some of the worst storytelling I had to sit through in the last 10 years slip by without being complained at.
> 
> If I was a creative writing teacher, I would fail their asses.
> 
> I wrote better when I was high, for God’s sake.
> 
> (OK, I admit that I actually *was* high or drunk while I was writing parts of this. Most of this was written late at night on Fridays or early on the weekends.)


	5. I write about a couple horror movies here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Please bear with me, OK? They're good movies and this will make sense.
> 
> ...after all the comments here, have ANY of you seen either "Mandy" or "Us"??  
> That's just sad.  
> One guy mentioned the Us movie, but that was it, just one.

**It’s movie recommendation time.**

Did anyone else see the incredible 2018 horror film “Mandy”?

I also like to call it “ **Nicolas Uncaged**.” LOL

But seriously, I was enamored with the film since I saw the trailer a year ago.

Mandy is one of my favorite movies of 2018, & I recommend it to anyone who likes horror fiction &/or surreal modern fables. It’s damn good. I’ve seen it 4 times so far.

It’s an amazing blend of horror against a deeply romantic Lost Lenore backdrop. It’s as romantic as it is psychedelic and brutal.

Oh, and I swear that when I looked at the trailer comments (in 2018), someone wrote a comment along the lines of:

“ _Count me in for the Devil May Cry fight scene Nicolas Cage_ does."

Trailer: _Watched_. Film: _Bought_. Hype: _Immeasurable_.

**https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI054ow6KJk**

**https://twitter.com/MandyTheFilm**

Send the director and co-writer some love here if you saw the movie! :D

https://twitter.com/panoscosmatos

https://twitter.com/somebadideas/status/1145167850925166593

...My only issue with the movie is that I wish all the deleted/extended scenes were included in the regular cut, and that the fight against the Black Skulls gang, and later on the cultist toting the chainsaw, had lasted a bit longer. Well, the latter makes sense because the film crew was operating on a tight schedule.

But **why** am I writing about this particular movie?

**Everyone has odd dreams at one point or another. I just have them often. This just happened to be one of the cooler ones.**

I also sent part of this post to an acquaintance who was excited about V’s character (this was3 months before the game was published), and we had been speculating on who he was and where he came from before Capcom shamelessly trashed that.

I had dreamt about elements from the Mandy film shortly after I first saw V’s reveal trailer last December or so. I had written down what I had remembered from the dream.

**Like, I saw V living and working in an isolated far-off town somewhere in northern or western Canada, or a low-populated U.S. state like Wyoming, Idaho, Montana. Demons had never reached them before. This is not a locale that says “this is good place for demons to attack it, so come on up here!”**

**Until late one night, a marauding cult summons demons to massacre the entire town as a blood sacrifice for the higher demon the cult worshipped.**

**Although he was badly hurt, V was the only survivor. Everyone else was either murdered or they eventually died of their injuries. The town was a mass grave.**

**He had little time to grieve. V hunted down the cult through the dark forest and learned their secrets— including his own way of summoning demons to fight for him— before he killed each member.**

**He soon reached the leaders’ stronghold, and it was their “Sabbath night.” The air was charged with unnatural energy.**

**As they spoke, he recognized some of their words from William Blake’s writing, and one name stood out… _URIZEN_.**

**Roots of the immense demon tree burst into view. He was too late to prevent its growth. But he knew he needed to destroy it somehow.**

More information, reviews, & artwork of the Mandy film:

https://www.revolvermag.com/culture/mandy-how-heavy-metal-inspired-2018s-most-psychedelic-action-horror-film

https://www.dmovies.org/2018/09/22/mandy/

https://blackgirlnerds.com/bgn-film-review-mandy/

https://vision-unlimitedreviews.squarespace.com/mandy-2018/2018/11/4/youre-a-vicious-snowflake-mandy-review-2018

https://ourculturemag.com/2018/10/13/review-mandy-2018/

https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/reviews-recommendations/mandy-panos-cosmatos-nicholas-cage-temple-doom-cult-movie

https://bloody-disgusting.com/reviews/3518688/review-mandy-grimly-alluring-fever-dream/

https://podcastingthemsoftly.com/2018/09/15/you-vicious-snowflake-a-review-of-mandy-by-josh-hains/

https://www.westword.com/film/in-mandy-villains-dont-stand-a-chance-to-win-nicolas-cage-match-10745112

https://cine-vue.com/2018/10/film-review-mandy.html

https://www.dailydot.com/upstream/mandy-review/

\-----------------------------------------------------------

https://posterspy.com/creative-brief/mandy/

https://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/features/illustration/inside-concept-art-behind-nicolas-cages-most-bizarre-film-mandy/#1

https://bloody-disgusting.com/movie/3533645/fans-mandy-asked-design-posters-many-submissions-insanely-cool/

https://welcome2creepshow.tumblr.com/post/179639833925/2018-mandy-by-tom-coupland

https://twitter.com/TRAlternativo/status/1089612083510067200

https://twitter.com/TRAlternativo/status/1086723614286712832

https://twitter.com/SethGrym/status/1085245073795604480

https://ultrakillblast.com/post/182388539998/mandy-2018

https://cinematic-literature.tumblr.com/post/178192474677/mandy-2018-by-panos-cosmatos-book-title-seeker

https://kane52630.tumblr.com/post/179070858054/mandy-2018-dir-panos-cosmatos

https://benafflecks.tumblr.com/post/181903621315

https://gastbat.tumblr.com/post/180598762504/mandy-is-an-utterly-enthralling-movie-and-i-love

https://megamoth.tumblr.com/post/179257031651/inktober-day-16-it-glowed-from-within-a-ghostly

https://javafueledcreation.tumblr.com/post/178931033821/you-are-a-vicious-snowflake-red-miller

https://darknessblackness.tumblr.com/post/186036510824

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------

https://www.talkhouse.com/best-of-2018-boots-riley-talks-panos-cosmatos-mandy/

https://ew.com/movies/2018/08/10/nicolas-cage-mandy-jason-voorhees/

https://bloody-disgusting.com/movie/3529763/director-panos-cosmatos-idea-mandy-2-see-nicolas-cage-fighting-nazi-punks/

https://twitter.com/hashtag/jointheMANDYcult?src=hash

https://twitter.com/hashtag/MANDYMovie?src=hash

**…In addition to Mandy, my favorite 2018 movies are:**

**Annihilation, Black Panther, Isle of Dogs, A Quiet Place, Hereditary, Sorry to Bother You, Suspiria (remake), and Halloween.**

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

**A few parallels re: identity in Jordan Peele’s “Us” & Devil May Cry 5**

I had actually written this back in April or so.

I love horror fiction, and Devil May Cry certainly can be considered horror, although it’s heavily blended with fantasy

...Well, at least most of the demon designs count as horror. The story is just a boring shitty sibling rivalry.

“ _If you wanna get crazy, then we can get crazy_!”– Gabe Wilson in **Us** (2019), speaking to 4 creepy strangers who show up in the driveway one night

I was wildly excited to see Jordan Peele’s latest horror film, “ **Us** ” since the first trailer was available to watch on Christmas. I knew that every fan of Get Out (different in themes/narrative than Us) would be speculating and discussing about this new movie— 3 months before it was in theaters.

Devil May Cry fans, myself included, had also been discussing & speculating what would occur in the 5th game since it was announced in July.

The film and the game were to be released within a couple weeks of each other.

I played/finished this game, was horribly disappointed, then I saw this movie about 2 weeks later, and I couldn’t help but notice some similarities regarding the themes of identity, humanity, and “twins.”

 _“That day, if our positions were switched... Would our fates be different? Would I have your life, and you mine?”_ —Vergil

*scary Lupita Nyong’o voice*: _“Be caaarefullll…”_

**Find yourself.**

**_Watch yourself_.**

Those are two of the poster tag-lines for Jordan Peele’s “ **Us**.”

Yes, neither work of fiction actually influenced each other because they were being made in the same time period, but I couldn’t help but perceive a parallel when I saw **Us** on 3/31, shortly after I played & finished **Devil May Cry 5**.

It’s a damn good horror movie; don’t let the trailer scare you away. The home invasion scene was the scariest part of the film.

OK, as **_Us_** gets closer to its ending, it is revealed that “The Tethered” doppelgangers are clones, artificial humans, and in the final 10 minutes, it turns out that “Red” was the **_real_** Adelaide all along, that the “Tethered” was the Adelaide we were familiar with before the home invasion scene. That’s why she knew what The Tethered were, & why she was so nervous before nightfall.

The movie has been out for nearly 5 months now so I think I’m OK with writing spoilers of it here:

The final twist of **Us** is that Red was actually the original human girl from 1986 and that “Adelaide” was The Tethered clone who stole the former’s life and left her prisoner in the facility. That’s why Adelaide knows a lot about them. Seeking revenge for her stolen life, Red organizes the other Tethered of the cloning facility to attack their originals in surface world, making their existence known and setting off the present day events of the film.

But I’m gonna write about _themes of identity_ here– mostly.

I like that Jordan Peele used color & number motifs in **Us** (11:11, red, white, for example)– and you can also see another blatant color motif in **DMC5** (blue vs. red). Sure, they’re just the coats the twin brothers wear, but it’s who these two people are that matter.

Dante is clearly not malevolent, nor is he running/hiding from his vengeful twin brother. He’s very different than Red and Adelaide in what kind of character he is.

But Dante, the man in the red coat, is also an unambiguous hero character. He is more in touch with his literal humanity. …despite his utter stupidity throughout DMC5 and its ending.

But Vergil on the other hand is a half-man/half-devil who grew up in near-isolation (as far as I know), and he blames Dante in part for their mother’s murder, saying that she “abandoned him”— Dante is not even * **responsible** * for that in any way whatsoever. _Damn_. And the reality was that their mother Eva was going to look for Vergil after she told Dante to hide, as people saw in the flashback.

Vergil, despite wearing dark blue, reminds me of Red with her hatred of Adelaide & her 30-year-old desire to kill the latter.

Instead of the brass scissors Red wields, Vergil has a magic sword that can open or close a dimensional portal to the Underworld, where he was stuck for 25 years (obviously without his sword).

Imagine being such a piece of shit that you blame your sibling that you do not see for 10 more years over something that the latter had ZERO fault or control over. You KNOW that it’s wrong; you KNOW that YOU are wrong, but you continue this delusion. Why? I don’t know. Even though he was 8 at the time, that’s definitely old enough to know better. Come on.

_“That day, if our positions were switched… Would our fates be different? Would I have your life, and you mine?”_

Vergil seemed to delude himself into believing that Dante was livin’ his best life when that was not even remotely true either. Vergil hates his own humanity & he harbors this obsessive yet baseless hatred for his brother that festered for almost **35** years by the time **DMC5** started.

So Vergil eventually comes back from The Underworld, maims his adult son (Nero) that he never bothered to find out he had in the first place to recover his sword, uses said weapon to raise an army of literal demons & an immense tree from the Underworld, murdering tens of thousands of people (likely more) in the process so he could bait Dante over to him so Vergil could finally kill him.

…wow.

So yeah, in a way— Vergil is somewhat like The Tethered from **Us** , but the similarities are somewhat minimal.

Except his whole motive is worse & far more poorly written.

Vergil is a quintessential elitist, a self-absorbed, abusive, narcissistic, snowflake, violent white man who treats everyone else like garbage and/or seriously injures them for his own selfish gain. And of course, a mass murder. Nothing says “poor guy” quite like murdering a city full of people with a demonic tree after you turned yourself into a literal blood-sucking parasite.

The shitty writers just seemed to be like “ _let’s just make him as much of a selfish spiteful loathsome douchebag as possible_ ” & yet tons of idiots are fawn over him. …Feh, those stupid people will throw themselves at any bitter self-righteous white man who murders scores of people in fiction as long as he’s conventionally attractive.

To wrap this up--

Jordan Peele has created 2 horror icons within 2 years, with 2 interesting horror movies that get viewers pondering about identity, class, race, etc. It’s clever, it’s unnerving, it’s eerie, & it’s meant to be uncomfortable for privileged people and the status quo.

Capcom doesn’t have the brains, or the heart, or the passion to do what Jordan did. Nor do they bother trying.


	6. Relevant Links

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some links and such for references as to what I'm complaining about

** Relevant Links **

" _No. We are not men. We are more than that. The responsibility is far greater. And you must be better than me. Understand_?"

— Kratos (God of War 4)

I already made it clear that Kratos is undergoing a good story arc so far with his son Atreus (“BOY!”) in **God of War** (4). That one definitely shocked me. Like, **wow**.

“ _I wish I'd had the wherewithal to find you when I had the chance_

_Instead I danced with death in fervor’s skin_

_I missed the moment before the fall to recognize I had a voice_

_A choice to stop it all from happening_

_If only I could save you from the pain_ ”

\--“Take Control” (Old Gods of Asgard), **Control game, 2019**

_**https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0QsHKH77MI** _

_**https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkdAgaF2vE8** _

And I recommend Remedy Entertainment’s **Control** to anybody. It’s an amazing stealth sequel to **Alan Wake** while opening a huge incredible new world. It’s soooo good and I love this game so much. I played it twice already!

**https://derelict-stranger.tumblr.com/post/188906812767/control-2019-video-game-review**

As for **Devil May Cry 5** …

**https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Quotes/DarknessInducedAudienceApathy**

It’s definitely among the worst-written things I remember seeing/reading in the last 10 years. The storyline is not even entertaining.

I also want to say that these people have good takes against this terrible narrative. And THEY were civil about it!!! People STILL yelled at them and insulted them for disparaging this game! It was never about civility! It’s about the power of opinion!

**https://derelict-stranger.tumblr.com/post/186109735517/unpopular-opinion**

**https://derelict-stranger.tumblr.com/post/186617253247/super-productivity-everyone-be-saying-nero-is**

**https://blueroseblaze.tumblr.com/post/183357926404/vs-backstory-and-whole-character-is-pretty-stupid**

**https://cursedchild67.tumblr.com/post/183856787021/so-apparently-nero-is-vergils-son-and-he-somehow**

**https://blueroseblaze.tumblr.com/post/184854566799/god-i-wish-v-was-his-own-character**

**http://dark-arya.tumblr.com/post/183975482212/the-last-half-of-the-game-nearly-broke-me-first**

**https://ehrzeth.tumblr.com/post/183374926275/dmc5-spoilers**

**https://kaguret.tumblr.com/post/183830010121/we-dont-deserve-dan-southworth-that-man-repeated**

**https://skvaderarts.tumblr.com/post/184452770909/three-chapters**

**https://skvaderarts.tumblr.com/post/184189602104/why-did-v-have-to-be-the-first-main-character-in**

**http://clockmongler.tumblr.com/post/183829810159/i-posted-this-on-twitter-and-im-gonna-post-this**

**https://blueroseblaze.tumblr.com/post/183373764294/all-in-favor-of-ignoring-dmc-5s-canon-and-making**

**https://derelict-stranger.tumblr.com/post/188421283482/shadow-emperor-vergil-derelict-stranger**

These responses are OK I guess.

**https://www.reddit.com/r/DevilMayCry/comments/boehld/unpopular_opinion_dmc5_is_exactly_the_bare/**

Oh, what’s this?

**https://www.reddit.com/r/DevilMayCry/comments/bkm7qr/capcom_is_clueless_this_quote_says_it_all/**

Imagine if the canon storyline for DMC5 was NOT a shameless rehash of 3 & V was his own man. Yeah I wish, too. But Crapcom has terrible writers who hate halfway-decent storytelling.

**https://mobile.twitter.com/TonyxsteveStony/status/1130852013405638656**

God, I hate these people so much. Itsuno should never have directed DMC5.

**https://www.gamespot.com/articles/devil-may-cry-5-director-would-like-dmc-2-but-only/1100-6466930/**

**https://gamingbolt.com/devil-may-cry-5-producer-reiterates-no-more-planned-dlc-says-theyre-open-to-revisiting-reboot**

**https://www.reddit.com/r/DevilMayCry/comments/bourvo/usg_devil_may_cry_5_director_would_love_a_dmc_2/**

**https://www.reddit.com/r/DevilMayCry/comments/boal8s/so_in_a_recent_interview_matt_showed_interest_for/**

**https://www.reddit.com/r/DevilMayCry/comments/boozq5/capcommatt_walker_still_want_to_do_a_dmc_sequel/**

**https://www.reddit.com/r/DevilMayCry/comments/bott42/i_thought_itd_be_a_while_before_the_crapcom_era/**

**https://www.siliconera.com/2019/04/24/devil-may-cry-5-producer-says-development-has-ended-trish-and-lady-wont-be-playable/**

Don’t bother, Itsuno. You’re a terrible director for greenlighting that godawful script for DMC5 and I hate you for that.

**https://www.videogamer.com/news/devil-may-cry-5-director-would-rather-make-dmc-6-than-a-dmc-remake**

Even if some random twit shows how bad the story is with a dumb meme, the other idiots will insist how great is & anyone who dislikes it is ostracized.

**https://www.reddit.com/r/DevilMayCry/comments/c2zb5a/the_plot_of_dmc5_in_one_meme/**

Crapcom literally used lame fanfic jokes in earnest. That’s how terrible the script was, but the rubes cheer for it.

**https://mobile.twitter.com/Mof_is_a_dragon/status/1112144533427490817**

Just look at how pitifully stupid this is, but idiot fans think it’s brilliant:

**https://lovefromritsu.tumblr.com/post/187237746041/vergils-split-braincell-trying-to-conceal-his-own**

What hideous rotten lives the twins have. It’s not even “living”. They both grew up to be such shitty people who should just die. End it already.

**https://www.reddit.com/r/DevilMayCry/comments/bboew4/dantes_vergils_brotherly_fighting_relationship/**

**https://www.reddit.com/r/DevilMayCry/comments/bbkjvm/dante_if_only_you_never_existed/ekjsge1/**

I don’t feel any sympathy for them, just contempt. I wish that Nero just let them both kill each other at the end of 5.

**https://derelict-stranger.tumblr.com/post/185955463567/lovefromritsu-what-if-nero-didnt-make-it-to**

Did Sydney Prescott show mercy toward her step-brother who donned the Ghostface mask in Scream 3? Or her cousin in Scream 4? I don’t think so.

Did Laurie Strode show mercy toward Michael Myers in the original Halloween II (1981) when she found out he was her brother? Yes, yes, I know that was nixed in the well-made 2018 re-sequel. Hell no.

...God forbid I wish that we could’ve had something better.

God of War 4 is a better action game, and Resident Evil 7 is a better Capcom game.

I regret becoming a fan of Devil May Cry in the first place. ...Shame on me for getting into new series.

If the present-day version of me went to 2018 & told the past version of me that I would hate DMC in one year’s time— the 2018 version of me would laugh and claim that 2019 me is just joking.

I never expected to hate & feel so repulsed by something I was so excited for & actually enjoyed once.

I can’t even look at the DMC characters without cringing or feeling ill because something broke in my brain.

It’s no surprise to me that Itsuno loves the godawful 2013 “DMCin name only” game because it’s a festering trash pit story-wise and character-wise, so he rubs that garbage all over Devil May Cry 5. Thanks a lot, you douchebag.

**https://derelict-stranger.tumblr.com/post/188742102683/how-dare-you-have-expectations-for-fiction-you**

**_“Duhhh DMC5 is all about killing demons and gameplay! It’s good that the story is a D-grade pile of shit with insufferable unlikable characters.”_ **

**You dumb assholes get Bloody Palace mode, don’t you?!**

Fiction that focuses on being “fun” doesn’t need to have a good story??

Bullshit! Have any of you people seen **Zombieland 2: Double Tap** yet? Because that was phenomenal.

All games focus on being FUN. Do you even know what a video game is?? Even some board games have better stories than **Devil May Cry.**

Also, here’s a VG example: **Portal 2** had a wonderful & interesting story, especially in the 2nd half.

I waited 8 years for something better than **DMC4** , which was predictable.

 **DMC5** ’s story was d-list tryhard garbage with zero substance.

 **The game itself was** fun but the story tried hard to suck the fun out of playing.

It didn’t make me care or sympathize one bit for any characters except for Nero (who would obviously live) & Griffon, who died for the sake of bad writing.

I hate every single one of these people so much for trying to spin a deeply abusive relationship regarding relatives as something even *remotely good or cute or sweet*.

It’s absolutely sickening.

**https://old-grimace.tumblr.com/post/188768508894**

Vergil is an abuser character in some of the worst ways and these assholes find that “cute & endearing.” Reading this shit makes me want to slam my head into the desk.

**https://derelict-stranger.tumblr.com/post/188754673127/orallech-if-i-beat-nero-then-by-default-i-beat**

  1. Society has promised me, as an upper-middle-class white man, a place at the top of society.
  2. I may not get what I was promised.
  3. I'm pissed because I think I deserve more power
  4. I’m gonna hurt a lot of people over this.



That’s canon Vergil.

He is a cruel and callous monster. His stupid evil petulance killed nearly a million people.

And do you know what else? V just up and leaves the Prologue mission. He doesn’t bother going to help the others fight Urizen. He was likely counting on Urizen to defeat them (and he did) so the Qliphoth Tree could grow more powerful on heaps of corpses and human blood, and it did.

It’s obviously NEVER shown that V actually helped any survivors over the course of that month. He was most likely lying about that as well, just like he lied about everything else. I bet you it was fake news.

V’s little apology tour ain’t shit.

He played the role of a conman so he could go fuse back into Urizen to become Vergil once again, and he only gets worse from there.

**https://derelict-stranger.tumblr.com/post/187157416282/eh-fuck-it-im-goin-in-in-canon-vergil-is**

**https://derelict-stranger.tumblr.com/post/186928363232/imagine-getting-half-your-right-arm-torn-off-by-a**

**https://derelict-stranger.tumblr.com/post/187019604117/one-of-several-terrible-aspects-of-dmc5s-story-is**

**https://derelict-stranger.tumblr.com/post/186617253247/super-productivity-everyone-be-saying-nero-is**

Imagine thinking this garbage makes a decent series. It doesn’t. IT SUCKS!!!

This is irredeemably awful, my God. The following two links are plain excruciating.

**https://fandomhell97.tumblr.com/post/187086820567/unpopular-opinion**

**https://tummyteeth.tumblr.com/post/187092353171/unpopular-opinion**

A large part of the Devil May Cry fandom really captures the act of being oppressively satisfied with something stupid that sucks.

They love pretending bad things are good… but this is not how it is.

DMC5's story is the literary equivalent of a kidney stone; how grotesque.

Ari Aster wrote a better piece of “family fiction” with **Hereditary** than Crapcom did with Devil May Cry 5.

**https://www.reddit.com/r/horror/comments/cv06x6/did_anyone_else_just_feel_awful_after_watching/**

Go look up the Hereditary Dinner Scene on Youtube. The hacks who wrote DMC5 don’t have the brains, the heart, the spine, or the balls to do a scene like that.

Nero is a smarter, more responsible character than either of his useless relatives, but a lot of shitty fans still hate him or mock him with “deadweight” jokes that stopped being funny in March. Or they just see him as an angry, naïve young person or some bullshit. They also mock his relationship with Kyrie apparently. …God forbid, she cares about him and she doesn’t treat him badly like his deadbeat father & useless uncle did. Looking at you, GameFAQs and r/DevilMayCry.

When Capcom shits out DMC6 in 10 godforsaken years, I hope that the opening shot is Dante & Vergil’s corpses, or their skeletons with either of their stupid swords through the other’s ribcage.

That’s barely more than what their “stans” deserve.

_**...I'm so tired.** _


	7. Conclusion

Just to keep you up to speed, here’s a concise post I made regarding why I wrote this project...

**https://derelict-stranger.tumblr.com/post/189684755692/pretty-much**

The message I got from the story was this:

" _Love and accept your abusive relative, and the negligent one who doesn't care about you-- no matter how badly they treat you and others."_

How horrible is that? That's why I hate DMC5 so much. It just shows that a character can be as evil and selfish as he wants and get zero punishment for it. It's despicable.

If those hacks at Capcom could hire a bunch of models just for the cast of characters’ facial scans for 3D rendering, they could have _certainly_ written a better story if they had the brains and creativity for it. Money was no object in regards to the script, for God’s sake.

I wrote a better story for FREE.

Capcom’s imaginations are utterly bankrupt when it comes to storytelling for DMC and they don’t even hide it.

They lack motivation. They lack passion. They lack enthusiasm.

It’s as if Capcom’s marketing ghouls wanted to make the story as pandering & shallow as possible.

“ _Don’t make it interesting, make it lame & uninspired. The idiots who buy our shit and repeat the dumb lines & memes ad nauseam will gladly throw away $60 bucks again when we shit out a special edition, which will just be glorified DLC. ...Haha, 10 years without Dante and we’re just gonna shove him in Hell forever because of evil shit Vergil did since we made him the villain again! And here, buy these grossly overpriced figures Dante, Vergil, Nero, & V for like 200 bucks each plus tax and shipping_.”

They don’t respect this series; they make it artificially scarce for a decade and then swiftly try to capitalize on it by bringing it back and pretending as if they cared about DMC all along instead of just letting the IP sit and collect dust.

“ _DMC is back_?”

 **Really?** To me, the ending of DMC5 was like a submarine bulkhead door slamming shut in my face as I was about to go through it.

Compare this to _Resident Evil 7_. After the lackluster previous entries, RE7 took some risks with a new engine and first-person horror, and pulled that off wonderfully. It has cool and creepy homages to **Silent Hill 2, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, the Saw series,** and previous RE titles **.**

 **Resident Evil 7** (and **Not a Hero + End of Zoe** ) was an awesome macabre trek through a dark bayou from the depths of Hell.

That’s what I **wanted** Devil May Cry 5 to be, except about demons and other monsters, ancient evils, things like that.

...but the writers of **Devil May Cry 5** took **DMC3’s** story, chewed it up, and spit it back out, leaving an unimpressive wad of gunk.

They just shit out a bunch of lame soundbites instead of substance— and the audience claps like trained seals.

I was so excited and full of joy for this game before March. I thought it was going to be wonderful, brilliant, a bold new direction— but now I sincerely wish that it was never made. I hate what Capcom did to this series. They treated it so badly. It is a cruel joke.

I wanted DMC5’s story to be GOOD.

That’s NOT the same as a story being deep. People get that confused, _seemingly on purpose_.

LOTS of stories are still good without being deep.

It’s the WAY the story is told that matters.

I truly hate Itsuno & the script-writers for ruining what could have been an outstanding game and a remarkable piece of interactive art.

It SUCKS that there are like a million talented hard-working authors in the world, and they toil in obscurity.

But thousands of morons act like DMC5’s story is genius & it’s worshiped?!

**The OTHER aspects of DMC5 were good. Notice that I never complain about that. Well, Dante’s battle theme was lame but I changed it to a DMC1 song because I have the Deluxe Edition.**

But DMC5 was so atrociously written that it felt like an insult. The ending was the worst.

...And the DMC fandom is among the most authoritarian, vindictive, mean-spirited people I’ve had the misfortune of interacting with. All of those negative stereotypes about “gamers” are true. Capitalism seriously rotted their brains and turned them into rabid zombies. If you go against their popular opinion, or complain about this series— you’re ex communicado. I’m glad I’m not accepted by or friends with a lot of these horrible people.

Only 15 or so actually treated me like a person and respected my opinions.

Idiots on Tumblr & AO3 accused me of writing Dante as OOC because they’re either forgetting or pretending that Devil May Cry 1 existed. That was my main inspiration for writing him. But said idiots love to pretend that game doesn’t exist, even though Capcom smeared shit on it with V’s familiars “ _being part of Vergil’s twisted thoughts and nightmares_ ” or some emo trash idea.

They were mad that I wrote Dante as a wise guy who is a little more low-key about it due to the circumstances— instead of being a pathetic manchild airhead that tries too hard.

**https://derelict-stranger.tumblr.com/post/187833310537/i-love-how-a-number-of-shitheels-have-screeched**

My right foot breaking ten years ago hurt far less than what people have said about me in regards to this shit game.

I’ve been a fan of paranormal fiction for half of my life.

I love action movies and scary movies, grindhouse stuff and “video nasties”. I watched that stuff since I was 13 and it’s been a huge inspiration for me. I hold guys like John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, and Dario Argento in high regard.

It was an eventuality that I would find out about the Devil May Cry games.

It seriously hurt me how bad the canon story turned out, especially for DMC5.

 **Face/Off** was a better piece of fiction about identity because the great John Woo directed it and Nicolas Cage was in it. It’s not a paranormal movie, but whatever.

Want a good story about identity? Look at Jordan Peele’s “ **Us**.”

Want another good story about a family banding together to fight a seemingly implacable evil? **Halloween (2018) and A Quiet Place.**

Better paranormal fiction? **Hereditary, Zombieland 2: Double Tap, Silent Hill 1, Silent Hill 3, Silent Hill: Downpour (if you play the good routes on the SH games), Resident Evil 7.**

...I cannot hide my enthusiasm for the things I love and enjoy, in this case fiction.

Ten years of silence since DMC4 & Capcom does this shit?! Why aren’t more people angry, upset, and disappointed like I am?

I’m so devastated that the story was this atrocious— while other morons worship Capcom without question. This broke my heart.

I never expected that I would hate something I used to love so much and be excited for.

I look at all the amazing fiction— whether it is high-concept and surreal, or something more familiar to a big audience but it’s still so well-made and well-told— that’s been released these past 5 or so years.

I will not, cannot count Devil May Cry 5 among those works.

It hurts for me to write that. It seriously does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thank the users and guests who left kudos on this project, and I thank the people who have left good comments because they actually took the time to read what I've written here-- instead of just insulting me like many other cruel people have.


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